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

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.