# [D15:1M]
Vision: [[The Fountain]]
Hexagram: [[Fifteenth Hexagram]]
Trials:[[Fifteenth Trial]]
Symbols: #grandfather #mother #machine #mines #mountains #snake #locomotive #winter #river #snowfall #brother #dog #sun #eyes #arm #head #smile #sister #airplane #bodyadrift #black #two #boy
May 27th, 1783, 2001, 2023
I.
And now, my grandfather is confessing
to my mother. He is hooked up to the oxygen
concentrator and while he confesses, there
is the occasional beep and there are voices
in the hall. His breath and the whirring of the machine
make the same sound. He killed a boy, he is saying.
They were all boys, the lot of them from the silver
mines of the Bitterroot Mountains. And now,
The three miner boys of Wallace get down south.
They are hammering away at the face
of another boy until he quits his whining
and squirming on the icy banks of the Snake.
Their hot breath together blooms soft and whole
like silent locomotives in the tin of winter.
The three distant boys of Wallace heave the dark
strange shape into the river. This is what
my mother knows. It is snowing now. And now,
I am about nine years old and my brother
and cousins and I are following
my grandfather through the quaint main street
of Mountain Home, where I was born. He has a laugh
like a dog with its snout tied to an exhaust pipe.
We love our grandfather and he loves us.
Now I am in the hospital with my grandmother,
on her third to last day, and my uncle, from behind,
is saying to me—is saying to the room—_you know_
_they’re trying to feminize men these days_. I am
turning to look at him because he stops talking.
He appears like a man whom the sun has blinded.
I am saying to him, _who_? Several times
She is rising in the night worried and confused,
and will not take water. And once, just once,
she sits up by herself with a smile beneath
her shining shrunken eyes. I am sitting
up and she is leaning forward with her arm
outstretched and touches me lightly on the forehead.
Her smile is making sounds I cannot understand.
I can’t be sure it’s me or someone else
she is addressing. She is lying down again.
In the morning, she is somewhere else.
And now, I am dressing in my best
friend’s sister’s clothes. I want to know what it feels like
to be a girl. I am skipping along
the sidewalks of our Boise cul-de-sac
in my new skirt. I am giggling at freedom’s swish
because I hear myself inside it. All the moms
and dads and kids and, it seems, even the dogs
are having a good laugh. It’s just a joke I like
to play. It’s the Fourth of July and our dog
has singed her whiskers black chasing the fireworks
that skitter across the pavement. I am
Dreaming of that skirt, even now, how wild
an animal it can still be, how much sex
for a boy was waiting within it, and is
waiting still. I am woken by the still
ringing phone in 2001 and the voice
of my friend is saying an airplane has crashed
into some buildings in New York. I am
telling her thanks but it is too early
in the morning for the news. And now, I am still
At wrestling practice, and two boys take turns
hoisting me above their heads and slamming
my body to the matless floor. I am
sobbing. I am saying stop. Now, which is also before
now, the boys are flicking pennies at me.
They are calling me faggot and queer and grab
my ass. Right now, I am laughing. What difference,
to laugh or to cry? Each a shade of the same thing.
Right now, my little brother is choosing
bubblegum ice cream. There are actual pieces
of gum inside it, so that he must chew
as he licks. And now, I am slapping the back
of his head. I am calling him queer. I am
telling him what a stupid choice it was.
I do not like to look at his face. Here and now,
Amon Pyburn is landing in Virginia in 1783.
And now, my great grandfather is hoisting
a drill above his head. It bores into
granite ceiling. He is bearing a secret,
that he is afraid of the dark. His rage
is where his strength dwells. His hatred
is longing for sunlight. Even now,
My mother is looking down at the tiny
body of her youngest son. It lies on
a coffee table in a private room.
She is looking at it right now. The body
Drifting down the Snake is beginning to open
his eyes. He his pale and looking
at the world as if from the bottom of a black hole.
And now, I am my grandfather’s last breath
breathing into the boy who wakes at the bottom
of the world. I can see an old man coming
down here to meet me. I used to think
there were two rivers: the Snake I remember
and the one I imagine. Right now, each boy
is beginning to make out a distant light
in the darkness. The lantern the other carries.