We meet in the parking lot at dusk.
Cold winds curl the sandstone cliffs
whose strange shapes speak of time
This poem was published in Volume 20 of The Climbing Zine, now available. Banner photo by the author
I will never know. We leave without gear
though Michelle shouts from the back of the truck,
you should take a rope and a few cams!
Chit-chatting among crinoids and trilobites,
we walk amid a land born from water.
Turtle Mountain sinks into shadow. Surely there’s meaning.
We tie our shoes.
Clip on chalk bags.
Start up.
The indigo glow of nature surrounds us.
Las Vegas throbs in the distance.
We weave a ropeless way between bliss and chaos.
What’s it like to be a dad? I ask.
He tells me about watching his three-month-old smile
as we keep hold of the prehistoric.
We’re trying to have a kid too, I say.
Then, I can’t do this move.
Then, I’m stuck.
Michelle will be pissed if you fall, he jokes.
I try laughing but far below I see the light
of Michelle’s headlamp back at the truck.
I’ve heard the sound a body makes when it breaks on rock.
I know there’s a future for me
and that there’s a future that doesn’t have me in it.
Grab my ankle, he says, climbing back,
lodging his body into the mountain’s emptiness.
Grab my ankle.
And this is how I survive;
this humanness among the wild;
this pulling someone close through a fear no one sees and everyone sees;
this extraordinary ordinary ancient naked perfect stunning act of holding.
I reach up, clasp my fingers around his leg,
feel bone and warmth beneath the cold creases of his pants.
His ankle pivots and pops.
I pull up on him and feel for the first time
the weight of my body hanging off another.
I grab back into the mountain,
itself a glorious, crumbling mess reaching skyward,
and we continue,
searching for anything to hold
above the darkness that stretches away forever.
Matt Spohn is a poet, essayist, and explorer based in Portland, Oregon. He received his MFA in creative writing from Pacific University. Matt’s work has appeared in The Climbing Zine, Common Climber, Alpinist, Climbing, and more. He is the recipient of a 2018 RACC grant and is a staff writer for Nike Sportswear. Matt has freed El Capitan, climbed on five continents, and established first ascents throughout the US. He runs Stoneworks Climbing Gym with his father, Robert, and lives with his wife, Michelle, son, Whitney, and their climbing Chihuahuas, Zoozoo and Cashew.
This piece is published in Volume 20 of The Climbing Zine.
