Climbing the Devil’s Chair

A poem about youth, age and the environment

You climb the Stipperstone triumphant. That once would have been me, striving, clinching the quartzite tor,

lithe and able, not hauling up the dead weight my blasted body has become. I watch mutely from below,

wrongly imagining there was a flat along the top, when it is a jag with no relief, a cutting incisor

the ancient glaciers had ground. I used to leap-run along the crag-edge, jumping from flat stone to flat stone -

huge expanses below me, unconcerned that I might slip or misstep, ankle-twist or worse. Instead

finding the rhythm that has no regular to it, trodding the cold drops from the molten spew, exhilarated.

That was miles away to the north and decades away in the past. This is here, now. With a long lens I capture the jagged

heights framing stone and your waves before you descend to the near-safety of jumbled scree and heather, chattering:

like me then, exhilarated by danger’s edge.

Like most I’m time-poor. If you appreciate my writing and want me to be in a position to do more, consider adding to my tip jar.

برو جبين

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Many thanks, Ben