I watched her from a distance
precariously climbing up
on a course of her persistence
Snowy-crowns and complex clouds
a calling to the soul
maybe not the top she sought
neither refuge nor control
She was younger then but strong
tense but not timid
she'd been treacherously summered
dangerously wintered
With an upside up and a downside down;
a master climber and a risker
a sister soul, a speaker
an old age thought resistor
By chromosome and floating fog
she was tentative but not falling
like a gravity doctor thesis
defying Steve Hawking
But through the miss's mist
she seemed informally not normal
Jumping tall and wide
like a careless young immortal
I saw her skating then, in pirouettes
like a wonderful young Fleming
out there on the precipice -dizzyingly ascending
Hypnotizing, mesmerizing
no understudies, no rope nets
just icy flashes and fog curtains
a sometimes soul subrette
But frequent streaks of brightness showed
blinding sunshine
searing white
melting ice and warming hearts
leaving spots upon our eyes
In silhouette
she stood on top
a conqueror, acting rested
yet another pinnacle
she fearlessly had bested
Then standing in the summit's cold
she peered back down the path
and saw a bird and heard a chirp
and her reality was recast
It was a small thing, rather puny
to this conquering mountain climber
a needy little puppet bird,
a Sesame Street headliner
But the chirp became an urgent call
a powerful magnet source
greater than the summit's siren
this avian counter force
And so these days I see the goat
on the lower mountain tracks
climbing through spring flowers
with the bird upon her back
But when the bird gets big enough
and it won't seem very long
He'll fly her back to the summit's crest
and chirp his saving song
