Two ice climbers rush the summit
in a single day, penetrating steel rings
with colorful umbilical lines slicing
through whipped carapaces of snow.
Dark clouds swirl in close around them
growling, guarding the umber mountain
with mantras snarled
and long lines of tattered flags flying
tigers and snow-lions.
The crampons pierce,
as they bruise the muted path,
coupled, yet unmarried.
An affluence of rock under the ice
carries them up,
as their cheers cheat the foggy fear.
Out, the lofty cliff face stares,
with frozen pitons prying into cracks,
stone corsets torn.
Ice screw holds with scorn
as he falls,
his claw hammer howling
from its clutch in the wall.
His weight full on the rope tether,
and she braces herself for him,
for his forbearances,
but no pull comes;
she hears only his white cry.
She lowers down to him,
his bone pushed out through the red,
already freezing the congealed wound’s eye.
She ties a tourniquet
to rebuff his confession.
Go down alone, she decides,
back across the moraine,
to the church in the valley,
and with a kiss and mercies of deliverance,
her cheek brushes his lips,
parting.
He settles into a cerulean cave.
His eyes search for her glow
in the bright below.
He hears alms streaming on the air,
and feels early crocus bulbs
springing
from his armpits,
from the earth green around him,
as the wind-horse sun
breaks from the squall
to build his vault
among the mass of fallen gems.
