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.