Poetry

A breathless resurrection

Almost at the top      pause      breathe

on again.  Fallen trees, narrow path,

steep       breathing      hard.

Sharp air.       Snow still iced

and white    between    the leaves.

Breathtaking      the view from the top.

Here, the valley falling away,

beyond, a path threading

through the liminal repeating

hills.  A screenshot imprinted

on my mind from the many times,

before I was rendered breathless,

I reached the top.

Today, nothing. Black screen.

Shut down by cloud.  Visibility nil.

I am the horizon.

The bench behind my back

the only reality, that,

and the kiss of moisture on my cheek

in the close, grey silence of this shroud.

The edges of myself, feel how they dissolve,

how they loose themselves, weightless

into mist.  No wind but my breath,

my breath, the wind,  my breathlessness

a little death.

Now, infinitesimal,  dispersed

throughout this forest, all of me,

whispered silver on the tips of the conifers,

glinting on the mud puddles,

settling on the feathers of the buzzard

and in the breath of the roe deer.

I can visualise this death,

this soft, blind, beautiful, breathless

resurrection.