Sue Swartz
Everest, June 1996
It is the deadliest season since the climbing began,
storms claiming twelve with puzzling vengeance.
I wince hearing of frozen bodies left on the slopes
human cairns teasing the next expedition and the next.
Sherpa or American, nationality means nothing
at twenty-six or seven or nine thousand feet
where limbs, concentration and judgement
twist in on themselves from air tenuous as love.
You quote me Akiba when I insist no one
has any business being on that slickness of
mountain, skating on Khumbu's infinite ice fields.
You say: everything is foreseen but free will
is given but I wonder if it can exist so close to heaven.
You give me a present - a box
small and unadorned by paper or bow, the avalanche
of angles a delight to your mathematician's eye
white on white borders bleeding one into the other
a perfect cube marked only by the space it is not.
I hold the box in my hand, turn it feeling for corners
for the place where one plane begins, another ends.
You have taught me to tiptoe on these intersections.
Perhaps it isn't only madness that propels us
to climb into the clouds, angel wings spread wide
across the slippery rungs of Jacob's ladder --
perhaps it is also desire to see hard corners
turned into roundness, breaking down
the angular planes of cold, or safety, of fear
like a puff of air breathed into a cube, opening it up
spilling its contents out onto the jagged horizon
color against color against white against white.
Susan Swartz has been a union organizer, social service agency director and diversity trainer. She currently has the pleasure of being a step-parent, spouse, Jewish ritual and service leader and Jill of all trades.
Email Sue Swartz at swartz@gumballpoetry.com
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