escape

its quite steep leading to the base of the summit

panting and intermittent chanting of effused exclamations

guttural phrases periodically break the pristine silence

dust leaps up and swirls sudden alive

it swarms angrily

enshrouds me, disturbed by my agitations

meeting my nostrils with a smell like talcum

set loose from the white scree,

its corpse granite flakes,

dead grey with black eyes opaque

stare back with stark indifference

like the speckles of a killdeer's eggshell

yet only crushed igneous rock,

the inexorable grind of eons' matter

lays like vast billows of granular salt,

beneath my struggling feet,

rattling below my pumping legs whose muscles' strained,

ached to overcome gravity at near 12,000 feet 

bathed in perspiration worked

up to the brightest blue of sky i'd ever seen

something drew me up

not the sky whose infinity can never be breached by mortal me

not the mountain whose immensity no flesh can contain

only the need to go

the need to climb away from the ordinary elevation of level sea

where zero means ocean

where salted water stings parched lips

where creatures of the deep though marvelous past credibility

alas, can only, after inexhaustible scrutiny,

be found inevitably boring

and annoying to the apex of futility,

once their cellular structures are plumbed

their habitat habits learned and known,

who can swim bare naked in ocean waters meant for fish?

who can live in depths of black and blue

in frigid cold of water's depths to play ?

the climb represents escape,

escape from the level to the height

the height translates entrance to the unknown

the edge of space attained by pain

a gain to the threshold of the silence beyond

where the thin air triggers and creates

a light headedness without the use of drugs

where the body's biochemical reactions produce a sort of nirvana,

escape from the drudgery of fellow man and his violence

escape from the deceit and monotony of life in the city,

escape from one's self