Climb

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

    Kuaui, Hawaii 2005

I climbed the carved veins of the mountain
and its slick arteries of scarlet dust, dark mud.
Breath jagged my lungs. Along the edge
I crawled, nearly on my knees.
The green jungle closed above my head
and from every side, wet vines tangled
themselves into dry nerves.

The muscles of my thighs shuddered
like an animal's flank. I would not give up
climbing, to descend where thousands
of feet below, the water was as green
and hard as a prism of stone. The surface
seemed unmoving, as if the water
had become a wall instead of an ocean.

A blinding white bird shot up through the nerves
and circled the white sun. Listen I followed
the bird's cries. I was desperate
and on an edge, wanting to be inside
of another body, rutted within the capillaries
of mud, or the green foamed ocean walls,
or the soaring heart of a tiny bird.