A Pinnacle of Stony Tries
The mountain started it.
Imposing its challenge
upon sky and sea.
I must accept it.
I am compelled to conquer.
I've become drawn to touching,
sharing senses,
exchanging skin.
Stoicism is a rock.
Yeah, right.
Both are metonyms,
found in caverns up high,
like oxymoronic holes in the sky.
Spelunking down the spyglass,
on stalagmite stairs;
pointing the way
in collected columns,
that climb
like us.
Rocks feel pressure,
cave in and crumble;
like grains of time,
an avalanche of life,
too much for itself
to hold it together.
Ascending I dare to grapple,
with textures and temperatures,
gradients by degrees
of warmth rest
in the velvet granite
flesh, accepting,
caressing sand paper cheeks
I trust the friction.
Finding my weight
propped against the mass,
I hold the balance.
The weight erodes, sloughed
in pebbles of problems;
raining by rocks in applause,
anticipating their early release,
from master sculptor,
whose has been a model prisoner,
Medusa obeying and repelling.
A climb is not a race.
A scale includes the middle march;
all possible paths, knobs,
and steps fossilize.
Planning each step,
I am pulled up by my own
labored breath,
my stomach in knots secure my spot.
I am too heavy on myself.
Yet,
the higher I get,
the further away,
I like to stay
because now I can see
all that I've known,
becoming strange, deranged.
I strain to focus on all that is,
and it clearly became,
miniature and small.
It is meaningless,
without this fight
to keep holding on,
even if I never make it
to the top
and Fall,
forgetting
all about
looking back
down
at the waiting world,
I found my wings
while giving up.
Image By George Edward Mannering [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo of Emmeline Freda du Faur (1862-1974) first female mountaineer in New Zealand.
