POETRY
Live to Tell the Tale
A poem of endurance, pathos and bathos
The boulder grips my calloused hands
In an unbearable, mighty press.
I cannot go on, but must.
My body pivots on itself,
Inching, flinching, desperately clinging.
The load must be maintained,
The job completed,
Destiny fulfilled.
A switch of muscle groups to twitch and flex
As scarred and dented shoulders take the strain.
Heels probe for purchase in the shale,
Find their fulcrum, lever up the brute and battered
Mechanism or brace that is my body.
The boulder shifts one more momentous foot or cubit.
Every movement measured by my frame,
Sweated through my pores.
The summit’s almost here!
I feel the slope begin to level off,
Each drive and thrust,
Each push and pump,
Draws closer to my goal.
We totter to a stop, my load and self.
I slump into the ground, become the earth,
My broken bones, its stones.
My job is done.
I seize my rest in an exquisite, brief embrace,
Before the fated instant comes.
