REPAIRING CAIRNS ON MT. WASHINGTON
We are constructing castles
Of stone on an alpine meadow.
Sunlight rich as butter
Ignites mica in granite.
High and small, blue-black
Ravens waft past.
Drinking champagne air
We scan sparse grasses
For large but liftable boulders,
Glacier-dropped chips
Off the old mountain block
No longer Himalayan high.
A Cheshire mason’s son
Ad-libs British quips
As we stagger back, arms
Stretched, strapping stones
Against our thighs like refrigerators
Belted to dollies. He drops
The rocks in their sockets
Just so, broad, level and sturdy
Enough to hold up the upper
Stories. The pyramid reaches
Its peak. He bounds on top.
Kodaks capture the moment.
Once in Peru on the hills
Above Lake Titicaca we saw
Such chimneys of fieldstone
But rounder on top and taller:
Local dignitaries’ towers,
Wolf-proof bone repositories
Rippled by sere sedges,
Pre-Incan time capsules
We chose not to open,
Landmarks on the hard-packed
Pathway to Elyssian fields
We were not prepared to follow.
Our cairns today escalate
Our spirits on our high way
And lead us to the blustery summit,
Blistered but lighthearted,
Knowing that some fogbound,
Windswept, rain-driven hiker
Will hunker down behind them,
Lay on thankful hands,
Peer cloudily from marker to marker,
And whistle as he descends
To sheltering evergreen hedges
And the canopy of oak and birch.
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