Stillness draws a line

Hip to heel to patient neck

Motionless as a man contemplating distance

As one beholding haughty peaks,

Empty realms where nothing breathes

Ascends with his eyes

Turns again to another wall

Each step is a continent,

An ice silence.

Granite matriarchs. Vast ochre cratons. Unanswering scrub

Deliberate and condensed

Makes a map with hands and air

Begins

 

 

First grasp

Sudden delight

Sweetness of fresh hands

Fluid-fingered and spider-limbed

Knees new, all co-operating

A joyful vertical swim

I am an instant lemur-like

Leaning into the embrace of

Concrete and corners

Holds my hands as a lover,

Banishing hesitation

Halfway high,

The slow ebb of impulse

Anti gravity reality returns to perch

Buffets my eardrums

Acid fingertip fatigue attacks:

An enforced pause

 

 

Above is

the line out

below

only    slow       regression

Concession to retreat:

Unnecessary.

 

Wired in neuron and muscle grip

My assurance that these things will hold

Knowledge of strength beyond my twitching arms

Reach again

Fingers, skin failing

Loathing letting go. Hating pain and pressure

Falling is not a crime?

A chance for arms waiting to embrace me

 

 

Muscle shake

He is crane-necked, artfully wedged

A chameleon wall statue,

Satellite eyes hunting for holds

The delay is brief

(A trademark, it seems)

Soon lunging swift and pulling upwards again,

Practiced strength

Composed. Intent.

Watching, I wonder at rockfalls and burial

How I can work these pulleys, but did not forge them

Whether we will always agree.

Hands swim backwards to chalk

Shoulders taut, splitting defeat with one last lunge

A quick kick of toes and a slap of palm

It is finished.

An understated feat,

Heart being conquered

I wait

 

 

Now at rest

The line of that gaze contemplates mine

These eyes that pure summits have lit

This face smoothed by thin air and self-survival

 

My blood drums from the climb

I am drawn still.