“Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.”
Donald Hall
It's mostly all uphill
this journey. And now somewhere
within reach of the finishing line
they've fixed focus on the horizon
though it undulates
with topography.
Roused from their beds
these are the walking wounded
with crutches, in wheelchairs
or just a limp. Shortness of breath
does not deter nor the quick quick slow
pace of heart. Some barely hear
or see yet they know
the summit cannot be far.
Downsized to one backpack
for pills, a Will. a small few things
to bring. No books but stories
memorized, of wars
and loves, all lived and past.
Each line of every agèd face
a map, an inscription, a lyric
you'll hear them, going along,
voicing the old songs, scratchy
as a record, backtracking through
the convolutions of their journey.
I know, I'm one of them.
For Bjorn’s MTB prompt: Perspective and Pronouns Revisited we are taking up a pronoun we do not normally use in order to write from a different perspective. I chose the third person group pronoun ‘They’ to initially create a distance which changes dramatically in the last line to the Ist person singular
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