BONUS POEMS
Wild Structure
By Alan V. Goldman
A boom, a crack, whoosh --
The echo of rolling thunder
Resonates inside my body;
All these are harbingers
Of the trembling, crushing
Naked power of the powdery
White death that flattens all
Before it, without discrimination,
And then transforms into
A sliding slurry that
Engulfs and swallows all
Hapless objects in its path
Before congealing into a
Cement-like sludge
Indiscriminately poured
Into an amorphous mold:
So, too, flow my uncorralled thoughts
Around, above, below, and through
The twisted paths inside my mind,
Into the liminal horizons
Lurking in-between the
Thoughts that careen about
The ill-defined boundaries
Barely structuring my ideas,
One from another, 'till
They merge into an amalgam
That has an internal coherence,
Not unlike the residue of an avalanche,
Existing for good or ill --
Its very being, however ill-formed,
Serving as its own rationale.
The Winds Speak
By Alan V. Goldman
Swirling about the silent slabs,
The mountain winds speak with
The ineffable wisdom borne of
Hearing the cries and confessions
Of all the lost and forgotten who
Regret having chosen a desultory path:
A way studded by fortuitous rewards gained through
Haphazard actions, not earned through merit,
But littered by random circumstances and serendipity.
O, how they yearn to have chosen the way
Of pursuing success by risking failure and
Exposure to peril in search of
Self-knowledge about the limits of frightful
Human endurance.
For in these climbers' defeats are untold glories
That far surpass any ignoble victories claimed by
Those who think they have found a plan to cheat fate.
And the winds continue to twirl about and about.
H
Paean to Being
By Alan V. Goldman
Slicing through the open sky
Your features give form to
Where there had been only
A devoid expanse without
Character or direction:
Vacant space no more,
Now imbued with design,
Further magnified by suffusion
With the purposeful intent imparted
To your skeletal features by
The climber's many storied travails.
O, if only your features could speak,
They would tell of the desperate
chances
Ventured on your extended flanks,
Imparting human meaning to your Otherwise silent stone.
So your framework has rescued us
from the
bleak environs by furnishing the mise-
en-scene
for climbers to act out their human
dramas
In the blank sky, no longer a desolate
void of
Airy nothingness, but the backdrop
for an active
Part of nature's being.
e
Trapped
By Alan V. Goldman
Sparkling splendors blinking in the night,
How can they know of our pitiful plight?
We cast our eyes upwards in search of solace,
But we know we're trapped out on the lip of this
Lengthy cornice.
One ponderous move backwards and we risked all
By triggering the overhanging, unsupported outcrop
Of compressed snow -- so delicate we now barely
Dared to crawl --
Frozen in fear lest our creeping cause a
Precipitous, fatal fall, and thus become our
Own springboard propelling us to the unknown
Other side.
So we crumpled in terror at our self-made
Predicament 'till we unashamedly cried.
Who could save us from our own poor judgment
In striding forward -- drenched in hubris -- drawn on
By the meretricious allure of a shimmering cornice
That stretched out into the blue sky?
A cornice that only now we knew it to be, and realized
Threatened to collapse underneath us, for by definition
It wasn't supported by the rock of the mountain such that
We would be mortally imperiled by the pressure of but one
Fateful step that could plunge us to our doom.
So we winced when we cast our eyes upwards, but
There was no refuge there:
Only inside us could there be the noble humility that
Would enable us, the mountain gods permitting, to
Enter that special space reserved for those who
Undertake a search for redemption,
And were thus willing to wriggle backwards on their bellies --
Without any appeal to a self-serving, saving form of
Grace.
Despondency Challenged
by Alan V. Goldman
I sing a song of sullen sadness and woe
That bemoans my anguish, sorrow, and
Long-forlorn grief, while I languish without
Relief from my rueful lament, tinged with
Regret that my sacrifices taint my triumphs, mar my achievements, and sap my hard-won glories of their latent consoling powers:
My grief always prevails in a putrescent sink of
"what ifs"-- for it festers as if in a stopped-up
Cesspool, never draining its overbearing melancholia
So as to fill all my emotions with a perpetual remorse,
Leaving me to marinate in a stew of self-reproach --
Except when I think once more on the sharp aspect of your brazenly insolent Northwest face, which smirks at my shortcomings,
And would blithely ridicule all my virulent tribulations, time after time, and then again;
Thus infuriating, arousing, and then
Summoning me to marshal all my being to try my fate once more, so as to silence forever your mute challenge:
Thus does eternal hope dispel the dreary gloom cast by your silent shadow --
Hope that blinds one and all so as to mask the true dimensions of your treacherous routes;
Hope that is said to spring eternal, like the hope born of youth;
Hope that I can meet my self-expectations on your forbidding flanks while knowing that these hopeful expectations can all be dashed by one wave that despair
weakens my resolve to test the limits of your pity.
O, take pity on me and give me this one last chance to contribute something of value to The life of my mind, and to enable me to touch the inner life of others.
___________________________________________
Striving for the Top
By Alan V. Goldman
Alluring like a majestic throne,
Its imposing summit always tauntingly
Visible while climbing beneath
Its maze of pathways below;
I wondered at its singular situation --
Passively awaiting its conquerors,
While silently watching them evade
Or overcome its defenses: its castle-like
Moats or bergschrunds;
Its trap doors or hidden crevasses
Its crenalations or jagged rockwalls,
Which seem so like ramparts or battlements
Challenging only those who would dare,
To win, as the motto goes.
Win what? The satisfaction of sitting
In the throne -- a symbol of both physical
Mastery and psychological dominion.
Renewal
By Alan V. Goldman
Each time I review
The massive wall anew
Rejuvenation does ensue
While my spirit can pursue
All that is within my purview.
And what does my demesne encompass?
Is it all that I can possess?
Or only that which I can bless
By my having duly venerated it
Through subjecting myself to its fickle whims,
Thereby renewing my right to occupy its
Throne without having desecrated it.
Likewise, I have thus not denigrated
My own sphere of action that
I have so carefully aggregated
By not having deviously manipulated
My unalienable right to explore
My own view of happiness.
And this is the essence
Of the spirit of effervescence
That animates my quest
For the essay that will
Manifest the path to all seekers
after the Freedom of the Hills.
Into the Realm of the Mountain Gods
By Alan V. Goldman
Insolent, you self-exculpate yourself by having to furnish no alibi,
For you are always "there" -- a presence looming above underlings
Who scrape at the sky when they brazenly dare to seek your summit;
Little do they know that they are entering a different realm of being or reality
Where one's mind is captured by dwelling in the space of abstract ideas:
The very concept of a summit corrupts the life of their mind by not having
Given fair warning that they are trespassing into the plane of perfection,
Of archetypal representations of a perfection that doesn't exist on earth,
And are not meant to be comprehended by mortals whose very presence was not
Foreseen in this wilderness devoid of sentient beings, nor welcome in this
Parnassus of poetic composition.
Disappointment at failure to gain the summit is so easily transposed into
Self-castigation for "failure" to achieve mundane goals that are so trivial
In the grand scheme of things that climbing should not be undertaken with
Any expectation of success; indeed, it is the very uncertainty of the outcome
That is the draw of adventure, which must unfold in its own fashion.
And the concept of ideal perfection in the mountain realm, existing only outside the mind, remains pristine.
Enduring Love and The Human Condition
By Alan V. Goldman
Why do you arouse me with nothing more than the crossing of your legs?
Why do you provoke me with nothing more than the sotte voce purr of your throat?
Why do you spur me to a feverish pitch with nothing more than the sway of your hips to and fro?
How can I fail to alert you to my impulsive urge to lurch for your stimulating figure?
And how can I suppress my urgent attraction to your form without alerting your attention to my ceaseless longing,
As I also furtively struggled to conceal my would-be innocent, but deceitful glance at the dance floor -- without being caught in the very act of doing so?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Only by cultivating some genuine familiarity on the basis of shared interests
That might deactivate your finely-tuned protective radar, which otherwise would
Unmask the course of my campaign driven by my over-heated vision of your pulsating sway?
It's sometimes said that relationships founded on a shared intense experience,
E.g., of a mutual danger [like an accident on a mountain], don't survive the "test of time," but shrivel as the shock of
The shared trauma, without more, inevitably recedes into oblivion.
If that's so, then how much less can a relationship founded merely on some shared
Abstract or vicarious experience of imagined intensity survive, where one based on an actual,
Disastrous life-event inevitably retreats into the recesses of memory?
So a lasting relationship must be based not only on superficial attraction, for as we
All have heard, "beauty fades" -- but love must also be based on some shared sense of enduring values
That will ultimately outlast the heat of passion.
The Power of Attraction
by Alan V. Goldman
Like a monstrous ogre, you would seem to reject all suitors who brazenly dare
To scale your ramparts without displaying due deference to your imposing bulk;
Yet climbers still flock to your faces, ridges, snow fields, and narrow couloirs without invitation,
Knowing full well the penalty for failure may be the termination of their relationship with you.
Maybe in another ten years?
By then your silent power of attraction, like a force-in-being, may have even faded a bit so that I may
Prosecute my campaign to conquer your heights without being overwhelmed and daunted by the grip of your majesty;
Unfortunately, though, a mountain's time is reckoned on a different scale than that of a human being's; moreover,
Your gravitational-like pull on all who fall within the path of your orbit dissipates as one draws further and further away from your form.
Yet when one is subject to your full puissance, your draw is like that of a nubile woman whose beckoning scent potently wafts through the air around her inviting shape -- and it is then that you exert your special "come-hither" quality of attraction that lures every climber to test his mettle.
In this manner, the power of attraction mentally outlasts even the decay of age,
So that everyone can entertain thoughts of struggle and conquest no matter the reality of the situation at hand.