Sometimes Climbing is Pausing
I thought of you today.
I was climbing a mountain
and I imagined that
you were climbing it
with me. At one of the
steep
parts, when I started to
fall back into the weight
of the backpack and
the weight of the air,
a spider sun itself
on a flat, well-lit rock.
I photographed it for you
knowing you
might not feel all that
comfortable around
spiders, but also knowing
the reason this spider is
still
with us is because I saw it
on the rock I was about
to step on. I hope it
is
somewhere else now, saved.
I hope it followed the sun
on its way down this mountain
the way I followed
my thoughts of you
on my way down this mountain.
