A man waiting on someone to die
drinks another cup, sighs
and looks at his watch, the face
everyone rememembers
for its twitch and drooping eye,
always running, always losing
a second, an hour, sometimes a day,
a year on the wrist of the dead.

Mother Ceres
hair trussed and
braided like an artichoke,
smiles down on this mad scene.

Bums asleep on every littered lawn,
cripples, drunks,
businessmen, young women
move by in the shattered light,
pacing to some cynical drum,
proceeding from
place to place.

Armageddon looms
with the stink of diesel
and a sudden roar.

Slow motion bodies
crawl, skip and hop.

The light grows white and
whiter yet. The ***** bus window
cracks
and outside
all is very still.

A head fashioned
from cold stone,
blank eyes seeing all.
A smile matching Death
to his lithe sister
Love.
A smile.

Demeter!
Ceres!
Mother of summer,
the dry wind.

Love the hollow stone,
the dust, the poisoned air.
Love this poor harvest.

We failed the summit that year
Diamond Peak
summer of 1974

There on a razor's edge ridge
sheer drop to the east
thousands of feet
certain death on that side
no safe path forward

And the way we had come
an arduous boulder-strewn *****
Angle of Repose.

As we pondered our next move,
I told my friend a story
that had just come
into my thoughts.

A young man,
as we were,
promised his friends
he would fly.

To their horror
he stretched his arms
toward the sun
and leaped into the chasm.

Most saw a young man
in the long arc of his demise
falling to earth.

But one sharp-eyed friend
saw a fierce bird of prey
come rising
with the winds
and land
there
on that ridge
where we sat
and from which he fell.

The story was a presence
there between us.
We sat together
lost in its meaning.
And then it happened.

A bird of prey,
entirely white,
unknown to us,
perhaps unknown
to Science,
came rising with the winds
from below
from where that boy in the story
had fallen.
It landed on the outcrop
from which he
(in the story)
had jumped.
This magnificent creature
turned its impenetrable gaze
to us
and screamed.

The instant the bird alighted
and flew down the mountainside
we leapt to our feet
to follow.

What came next
took place in myth.

In that myth,
we were heroes
able to run at full speed -
some would call it a breakneck pace -
down that long mountain *****
Boulder-strewn.

Without fear
Without hesitation
in full stride
one boulder to the next.

Boulders the size of cottages
Some the size of a grey whale
mysteriously beached on a mountain.

Flying more than running.

With the falcon as a guide
we wandered the afternoon
through trackless
wilderness.

A timeless afternoon
in the Garden.
And then humbly
back to camp.

You might not believe this story.
But it is a story
as true as myth
and every bit as real.