Tonight's Poet Corner: At Its Peak

At Its Peak
by Belinda Roddie

It's a cloudy town in my mountain
town, and though I wish I could resist,
I must climb, and climb I do.

I scale walls of broken gold and ivory,
ignoring catacombs and dead heroes' toothaches.
I squeeze salt from rock as I grapple with grip,
and I wish the mist could actually cool me down.

It doesn't. It heats me up instead. Bubble,
bubble, toil and trouble. I think about
my wife at home, at the bottom of

the mountain. She stirs pepper endlessly
into a pot of water. She has never known
how to cook.

The clouds don't subside even when I
reach the top. They say God cursed us never
to see the heavens; instead, we are doomed

to gray visages, where all precious metals
dim, bone goes dry, heroes' mouths grow
as parched as pink sand, and climbers
slip and fall as soon as they gain their footing.