Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more
Than others do. Some can withstand any horror
While others will easily surrender
To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.
In Utah, one man carried another
Man on his back like a conjoined brother
And crossed twenty-five miles of desert
To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?
Do you think you could be that good and strong?
Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.
For some a mountain, say an Everest or a Kilimanjaro,
exists to be conquered, the kind of obvious big thing
my father, that valley dweller, would casually diminish.
What’s wrong with life in the lowlands, he’d say,
why not just look up, enjoy imagining
how you’d feel at the top? And interesting people,
if you need them, are everywhere. They can be found
in a glade or a clearing, even in a suburb.
My father is dead; he only has the words I remember
and choose to give him.
If I were to say my need to define myself
involves breathing air not many have taken in,
and the excitement of a little danger, I’d hear him say
Do some good work, mow the lawn, carry wood
from the woodpile. Don’t confuse the dangerous
with the heroic.
But the truth is I’d like to be a mountainizer,
someone who earns the pleasure of his reputation.
When it comes to women, I desire them married
to their own sense of accomplishment, each of us
going our own way, coming together when we can.
Not enough, he says. If they lack generosity
they take back what they give. If they have it
they remind you, ever so gently, that a man
who climbs mountains leaves behind his beloved.
It is impossible to win arguments with the dead.
Everywhere you go there’s danger of being a no one,
my father insists. Is he changing his position,
or is that willful me changing it for my sake?
The grave was always his destination, the modesty
of his ambition obscured now by lichen and moss.
Comes the mountain before the reputation, I say.
Comes the unsure footing, the likely fall, he says.
Between us and you there is a
great gulf fixed: so that they
which would pass from hence to you
cannot; neither can they pass to us,
that would come from thence.
Luke 16:26
1
At night when each dark shape in the desert
glows in the light of its own penumbra
I take the road by one white hand
and lead it to a deep arroyo, a dry wash
in which the river lives when it is home.
Stones remain where the water dropped them
and beneath them aged scorpions sleep
in small hotels with no view at all.
The sand is cool. I wonder if the river
will be here when I need to drown.
2
We choose from what is available and fall
in love: anchorites with spiders, sailors
with each other; the bleeding foot
returns to embrace the shattered glass;
the overdose goes in search of an addict;
and those who are too much afraid
fall in love with their fear.
3
I was broken by love but I was
so well repaired I can pass for anybody,
standing here where a river used to be.
In one hand my prayers, in the other the answers,
with a great gulf fixed between them.
To get here I dragged my shadow
over sharp stones and felt its cuts
and bruises. But the river was dry.
Oh Jesus Christ
and all my fingers losing their rings!
What will become of me when I offer
my soul to the Devil and he doesn’t
want it? What will I do
when there is no one left to betray?