On the Wall

Nightly Meditation Meets Cautionary Tale

Every night, I drift to sleep

Imagining vertical ascent

up craggy rockface,

frozen waterfall;

taking on Squamish,

Lhotse,

the Dawn Wall;

a curious lullaby for

one with a tingling fear of heights.

Then

this movie:

a shaggy Canadian alpinist,

one-quarter sage, three-quarters goofball;

One wrong move. Improvising by instinct.

at 7,000 feet, Patagonia’s Torre Egger in winter, blizzard raging,

night falls. Cocooned inside his tent,

handheld video to his girlfriend just know I love you

he makes it down.

125 minutes into the 133 minute run, climbing Alaska’s Mendenhall Towers

(like him, I don’t know what happens next, beyond

the celebration at the summit, light fading, better get going)

GONE.

Bright orange rope

the only trace

of whatever calamity befalling.

In my living room, I am a survivor

but how to sleep, robbed of my rockabye portaledge

suspended 2,000 feet above the dream of Yosemite Valley?

That orange rope keeps me awake, but

He’d want me to keep climbing, his girlfriend says,

allowing me to drift off into sleep

suspended,

confident gravity is not my end

but the reason I wake

to rise.