i touched a cloud on mt. rainier
i met the sky —
i walked through fear over shingled rocks,
drawing near like icarus to high
places, to mountaintops
where silence talks
and my mind grows clear.
but it wasn’t here that the ecstasy came —
the ascent, the burn, the timidity
of pain —
but in going down the mountain,
deepening into darkness
with the disappearing sun.
i looked back to see pilgrims
descending in the dimness,
their lanterns lit,
a long line illumining the trail.
i turned aside from the mountain
to resurrect the moon.
i traversed a world renewed.
i will say no more.
i would only mar
the unexpected splendor
of descending in the dark.
—
Marie Burdett is a professional gardener and current MFA student at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Her work has previously been published in Lucky Jefferson’s 365 Collection, The Cypress Dome Literary Magazine, and Forbidden Peak Press.
