Above the Tree Line...

[demon151.livejournal.com]

Above the Tree Line


Only the tenacious
reach this summit cone — scoured
to stone by eons of wind
and rain — that I have climbed to
this day in my own time,
trying to surmount
something human.
I intended to carry
only what I could bear with ease,
yet I've hauled my tethered heart
one-half mile straight up
through densities of sun-
doused birches, fountains
of ferns that swept my knees —
clasped evergreens, then scrambled
over palm-rasping rocks
past stunted pine and scrub and
chalky, anonymous berry bushes up
to the gray, pocked surface
of this enormous glacial brain
in whose corrugations thistle
and lichen sprout. Strangely,
seeing birds circling
overhead, I don't yearn
for flight, or any fanciful freedom.
The world below is mine,
though ruthless. I lean
into the breeze sweeping
seventy-five miles from the sea,
anchored by an earthly sorrow,
rooted in grief,
the ground that will never give way.


Kathy Mangan