Poets and Mystics
My friends who climb
mountains never sing
about mountains.
My friends who sing but
never climb sing
about mountains&emdash;
of their distant beauty drawn in green and white
against the horizon.
My friends who climb
have seen friends
fall to their deaths when
frozen ropes snap.
They know the treachery of
handholds, black thunderheads, thin air, and
ice walls, silver-mirrored, that can illuminate hidden
ascents,
or sometimes blind.
They do not sing of mountains
because no words come to them
when they climb, they just
climb,
their journey beginning with the first breath,
indrawn.