Robert Hamilton
S.
Aurita
A
glance out the window is not enough.
Thickening
pines break up the shadow
of
the train as it rushes past, as the land
breaks
upward. We tunnel through branches
wet
with lichen. The first vista is a shock, but
nature
itself adjusts, decays back into order.
The
air thins to nothing as strange filaments
flutter;
if you look carefully, here begin the flights
of
the yellow-and-white moths that can live
at
no lower altitude. Wheels spark and
search for
pull
against the grade. A few harsh breaths
now,
a bit of Cheyne-Stokes puffing against
delicate
chill.
Not so for you. In your solar
garden,
where we cannot live without sucking
from
oxygen bottles, you drift on absolute tissue.
A
herd of cattle clangs past, pelts smelling of sweat.
Who
are you to them? An annoyance?
A
barely-seen yellow spark? A phosphene?
Here
is your clarity; it is too much to stand.
They
have stopped the train: alas for us,
nothing
goes higher than Mürren. Air burns like silica
as
I shape my white breath before me.
These
are not your trees, not your powder squeaking
under
my boot. Nothing I touch is yours.
And
from the slopes of this mountain
all
recedes, flowing silently down, an avalanche
of
expectations. Nothing remains but the
cloud
enfolding
the summit where a man in an old cloak
is
listing all of the laws we will ever have to keep,
and
not even he sounds excited about it.
Meanwhile
you spiral on cumulus drafts,
bearing
away whatever is frail enough to rise.