We drove almost to the mountain-top, And had no wish leave it when we stopped; No wish to leave the dew-enhanced, dew-christened air That pleasured the lungs like a circus scare 5 When the sure trapeze for once escapes talced fingers And the mind on sudden emptiness must linger That had thought to catch a glittered body's twirl. The thinness of the atmosphere made dull The closing click of doors when we stood 10 A moment out of the car and out-of-doors. Sunset took the higher half of woods And the tin toy of the Ranger Tower And showed us how a second Troy would burn. We smiled to see just what we understood 15 As we stood together without a word, Without the cluttered need to speak and yearn That had made our road-trip Cassandra and the King. The library had malformed our limbs To wood, as much as books are wood, by sitting still 20 To read. We were over-ready to try a climb Or try our no-words silence or try anything To stretch out the long day of many knots Our deep need to know had dearly bought. The road swirled up away from feet at once 25 Round the mountain-top as round an ice-cream cone; The road was rock and mist, the bones of clouds, Red tatters gone redly under sky's west rim, Like lashes of an agitated eye grown dim. We watched small spots of dark swell and bud 30 And swarm up after us all the way until At the last powerline we were caught In a fatal undertow like a single thought.- We walked on colder, with dark-adjusted eyes, Still rounding toward the top. Things in nature 35 Cried out their alphabet of names, but none Were ours, or reflected back any name we knew. Our silence stretched between us like a clue. Footsteps added footnotes one by one Until we had left lower for higher ground for sure. 40 The tower sprang into the interrupted skies. Spray paint through a lettered grid of spaces Had tiered the artifact with conflicted texts. We smiled once again to see nature vexed; To touch where some derelict human trace is. 45 We grinned, too short of breath this time for speech; We would have said a word or two this time, For comfort's or for habit's sake, among pines Where, in counterfeit of clouds, we saw our breaths Touch. But we were wordless and rib-sore, 50 Out of perspective in a piney bowl Rushing up around us like a garden wall That aimed to keep in both flesh and soul Within the clear-burned stone which grayly bore The bolted tower that rose without a door. 55 We might as well have been inside a kettle With the tower for a witch's ladle For everything additional that we could see. We scanned the structure for defects, but hurriedly. What with the talus and its getting late 60 We knew we didn't have the time we had. Still we gripped the rungs; they poured a cold Beyond experience under our skins. They were put here for a purpose, as a gate Is put- to propose a boundary and suggest 65 A sort of going through. Of course, the jest Is that the gate can't tell who's going out or in. And we ourselves can't be sure of what we take With us, in a purpose we call ours. The sky began to stipple with young stars. 70 Each strut galvanized chilled hand to sweat, So that we had to pull rolled sleeves over Each rung, and get what grip that could make To hoist ourselves a little more above. Our collars had been thumbed up since we'd begun; 75 Our inch-thick sweaters had been left to hang Like exhausted swimmers over library chairs. Stars jarred and jumped-no, that was our eyes- We took two deep sucks in to every one That before our sojourn had satisfied. 80 What mist was in us at once would seize Into ice spider-webs instantly as breath. I hung halfway up a minute and heard The charm of deadened church-bells in her tread, Ringing on the upward steel as cold as death. 85 I looked around afloat in the tops of trees Dizzy as masts and yardarms in a racing sea. Night had come upon all things everywhere. The trees put on their cassocks black and bare, But refused to give a redemptive air. 90 Trees, gathered for prayers, stood devout. The tower was all exposed angles and no lee. She was where I couldn't quite make out- Loudly made the platform on hands and knees. Something of ice came down in shards. 95 A keening wind, whetted almost to urging, Made me wonder darkly at the wooded ring; The mountain leaned to windward And snatched my shirt to tell me "Come and see..." With a knowing note of something up a sleeve. 100 But this was more than would fit what I believe, More sleeve and deeper than what I knew of me. "You should see it up here, you really should. Come up, Kerry, and hold me by the shoulders. The world's as small and sharp as in a mirror. 105 If you shout down the mountain, you can hear Echoes carry your own voice back, but clearer." As if Earth were one to put our feelings to Who never once told us what to do.
From the collection "Assembling the Earth"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.