Arolla

How does one sleep with such clarity?

Even the heads of the gods

must hurt in thin air. The blood

that is the inner ear

trickles all of the time

while the high-pitched stars

send their pulses beyond our hearing,

telling us that the universe is populous.

Only the mountains seem like dead things

at their peaks harboring glaciers

in frozen turmoil, emanating from fields

of eternal snow to make rubble.

It is easy to read the intent in their

blue hearts as they gaze at the valley,

the legacy of their ancestors.

Far above them where we hiked today

markers show that climbers fell

from the paths as if like angels

that spacy blue were their element

or that in love and terror they found

common ground and would not compromise.