Brocken Spectres
Early morning slog up steepness
mantled in mist, moist droplets
dripping from our brows, our noses.
Breathless lest we are too slow,
too late for our own lives.
Cloud-vapour thins as we ascend,
like dry-ice after the show begins,
until we are in clear crystal light,
a low tow-maned sun behind us
as we stand on the cliff-edge peak.
Islands of hill tops bob above
each valley’s ocean of dense whiteness
where tendril waves end at our toes.
And there are our shadowed selves,
long-legged giants projected out
and away for mile upon mile,
stretched and flung across this sea
by broad prismatic sun-shafts.
We hold hands, leap, shadow-box.
We wave like welcoming children.
Brocken Spectres! It sounds like
some Gothic novel alpine fantasia.
But there are our rainbow haloes,
there our aura-throbbing glories.
Raggedy crows fly up from the brume,
disappearing slowly down again
like shiny black fish rising for food.
Our shadows are still huge, needle-sharp,
on time, punctual for this moment
as hand-in-hand we move together,
from broken to mended.
Joined.