We breathe more
going up.
The steps creak
louder going down
as if all the air
that lifted us
were gone now
and we sink
weightily, body
alone, unthinkingly
from step to step—
Virgil says it’s easy
to go down.

But sometimes
as I climb at night
I linger on each step
to think the thought
that lives right there,
only there, at that
particular ascension,
that shelf of history,
every step its own
chronicle, theorem.
I stand there, stunned
by what is suddenly clear,
what is utterly there,
then hoist myself
out of that thinking
then rise to what waits
eight oaken inches
closer to the stars.

On one step
I stop and think
of who I am—
but ‘am’ is a house
with many floors—
am I what I look like
as I do a certain thing
or am I what I think
in doing it? Am I
even doing it, or does
the task itself draw me
into the vacuum of itself
to be done, so that I
have no more agency
than a feather floating
on the wind?
So many feathers these days
on the deck, the old
steps outside, the hawk
attacking mourning doves
again, soft birds
that come to be fed
so it’s my fault when
the Cooper’s hawk comes
down and kills them.
And is that too what I am?

Why are there steps
and how many are there,
I count all the time
and the number keeps changing,
how many steps to get where I am,
and know the place
and go on from there?
And why are there numbers
anyway, chalk marks
on the cave wall,
up the stone hill, no,
the wooden hill to Bedfordshire
they used to say
night time, beddy-bye
where Great-great-grandfather John
was a priest and knew
a winding path to Sophocles—
I knew Greek once too,
that was a gorgeous step,
a long swoon of scholarship
a warm unending autumn afternoon,
but I digress— you’d think
that would be hard to do
on a single flight of stairs
but no, distraction beckons everywhere,
and maybe wandering aimless
is the real road to Jerusalem,
pilgrim quest, top of the stairs,
al som de l’escalina, said Dante
who knew who waited for him
up there. And for me?

Take one more step,
who knows what I’ll see from there,
the groaning elevator of my attention
yearns to rise. O an elevator
would be a precious tool
to bypass thinking
into pure Arrival,
up there, where the angels
wait to stage the night’s dream.
Though I suppose dreaming
counts as thinking too,
wouldn’t you?

And sometimes even
while I linger on a step
(speaking of thinking)
I’ll think: why not stay here?
This present place,
this exiguous plateau
is new-found-land enough for me.
Stay here and be at home
halfway to nowhere,
but home, home, no more
climbing, no more going down.
Standing there upright
somehow feels like lying down,
peaceful, a long soft exhalation,
all vigilance relaxed.
Then before I know it
a foot lifts by itself
and heaves me to the next step,
bare tundra and a sense of loss.
My body has its own ideas
so who am I after all?

                        23-24 July 2020