Personal Mountains

This long walk, this
ancient road,
and we are at the
foot of the mountain,
at the brink of
the deep and
abiding snow,
looking upwards
into the eons
of the night.

This long walk, these
ancient travelers
within us, come down
though generations
of twilight, of
the first and
second worlds
beneath the earth,
now broken free
within us, we
who are the
latest iterations
of the spirit world.

This long walk, this
bitter chill of
knowing much, but
so little of keen
import to us as we
regard the vistas
ahead, the faster
windows of twilight
yawning open,
beckoning us
for a march far
greater than all
those we have
spent out our lives
upon, beckoning
like dessicated
trees at the verge
of volcanoes,
burnt but undying,
old and bent but
without conception
of capitulation.

This long walk,
and the empty road
behind us, where
raptors have circled
above and heat flashes
have dazzled our eyes,
where our feet have
swollen and bled into
the ungiving earth,
where the tough
grasses have been
filled with thorns
and the water
tainted with silt,
and we have known
suffering before
beholding the
face of yawning
infinity, the
mountains that
we may yet dare
to scale, still
ready to annihilate
the spirits within
us and make us
drown in our own
dust, all while
promising, promising
the unbending horizon,
the supreme force
of eternity.