- What do I see up there?
Who’s with me?
Are my fears with me?
The Boulder
The weight is his – been his to haul forever –
well not quite that long – when he was young
he kept it – a small stone in his pocket –
a part of him never shown to anyone
but how it’s grown and chains him down
the whole height of him bent in chains that can’t be cut
a constant strain increasing and no one catching on
When someone says – Ever climbed that hill? –
he wants to shrug the weight of it off with a shiver
– wants to believe he’s free as anyone
Yet how can he take himself anywhere?
It betrays him every time
ends up crushing him with a single tear
And at night when he drops dead asleep
it wakes him at three a.m. and heaves him off
to a black water swamp with a bright hole in it
of moonlight where the weight pulls him through
into stink and pismire and depth of ooze
and in this muck once more he knows
a torment of soul for all that might have been
what life comes to in the end – chronic pain –
disease that eats away the personal realm
a sagging lack of will at this undoing
At three-thirty he’s open-eyed but mouse-blind
By four he’s stumbling about by dim moonlight
trying to pull some sense of a thread to weave
a backstrap to bear all the better this awkwardness
but it isn’t gone – it still has him deep in the ooze
His hands don’t work the way they used to
His eyes keep blinking – his heart keeps pounding
and won’t let him go back to sleep
until in a swamp of confusion he does
his sore arms wrapped around the weight
In the pre-dawn there’s a hill the others forgot
He plans to climb it and meet the sun
forgets what anyone says
lets go of all thoughts of chain-cutting
and shoulders the weight in his climb
over roots and dirt and rocks one foot at a time
Through the half-dark this work feels right
His left leg leans into the burden
his lungs bellowing – but now he stumbles
staggers careening – lurching – wrestling
so the weight won’t throw him off a cliff
and yet this dancing chaos
sends him heaving upward toward the height
where at long last he can rest in his chains
This darkness is expanding as it’s fading
and a thin moon is sailing behind him
Mountains become their green again
and their rivers turn to silver
Hawks rise and circle to bathe in this new sky
His eyes blink tears in this fire burgeoning
gilding the ragged firs at the ridges
along an arc that opens toward a still
vast intensity of blue
until in this one moment he’s lifting
– no longer held by dull weight –
stepping into air – left foot – right foot – into flight
And everything – every pain – every meaning lost
– a life in chains – is worth this one moment
with moonlight behind and a clear day ahead
step by step into giddy infinite space
– Eugene Marckx, March 4, 2023