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.