July poem of the month (?)

I know, it is long past the 1st of July. But I haven't posted poems-of-the-month for many months past. Perhaps this will kick-start me back into it.

This is the first section of what is meant to be a four- or five-part poem. Enjoy.




















Croagh Patrick


























I.

The first sight, itself, was frightening.
Four play-doh peaks, bulky blunts, huddled en masse
in a pudgy ridge: mountains wearing mist. This was naught, not much
at least: the final peak was but a base
for an unearthly cone. A terror of shape,
a horror of size, its height in the skies,
its head in the clouds, its fearsome sides
something to conquer and adore. A correspondence
of every step of my foot with every foot of its steppes.
The ghost and machine of me compelled
to see, to scale, to grovel, and to defy
with equal joy in submitting and surmounting: no distinction,
no divide. Why analyze
which trembling is fear and which is love?
Whatever the body does, does something to the soul.

This was a steep climb, a stiff climb,
carried up by persistent elation. I understand
the hiker’s drive and dictum: sheer delight
(on sheerer heights) of possession,
a scaling obsession. Just the same, the painter, the poet,
the photograph: obsession to possess, longing to ingest
absorb encompass integrate and synthesize
beauty: to make that beauty part me,
to re-make beauty in its turn.
Whatever the body does, does something to the soul.
That is why they climb.