©John Teschky

1.
I begin my ascent after I quench my needs: rinse
Myself and my socks in a creek as cold as marble,
Air my bedding, break my camp, eat. Now
The sun's hegemony is unimpeachable: everything--
Mule deer, rattlesnake, bear, the lovers
I pass at the Tooth's base sharing a gossamer
Backpacker's hammock--everything is muted
In heat as hot as the blood Christ sweated.
Even while among the soft conifers, while shaded
By branches as exquisite as Belgian lace, while decomposing
Needles seduce my steps, I sweat.
Because of those needs I now drown in my own sea, but not
Really. I can swim, so on a sweat sea I could float
to the top of the Tooth of Time and doubly enjoy the peak:
For its view, and for rescuing me from the sweat sea.

2.
My body will be burden enough
To push to the peak, so I place my pack
Under a spruce at the tree line, and put into a satchel
What I'll need: a camera, a canteen, a notebook, a pen.
To smoke on the Tooth of Time seems sacrilegious,
And would wind me more, so I smoke
A final cigarette, a final civilization fix,
And exhale hare, like a diver purging water
from his mask, aspiring to scrub
From my lungs every smoke particle.
Yes, this is the granite crown the Marlboro Man cantered
Past before tobacco ads were banished to print.
No, the Marlboro Man couldn't have smoked and dominated
This terrain: it is too severe, too chimeric. Mate
Versailles and Pompeii; Eden and Hiroshima.
Granite, lichen, the primordial heat,
Turn my thoughts Darwinian:
I, with a college degree
And a knowledge of Cognac's grades,
Am here a brontosaurus with emphysema.

3.
The dried sinew of a human-height pine rises
From a crack near the peak like a toothpick, or
Like the mast of a frigate wrecked below the rock's surface.
That it grew here doesn't surprise me--pioneers
Cling everywhere to the Toot of Time:
Sprawled-out lichen clutches the granite as if by its
Fingernails; algae and larvae thrive
In rain-filled dimples shaded by outcroppings
Like the grottoes of hermits--but I'm surprised
That the tree grew so high, prospered so long,
Only to die and stand like a savage's
Warning to future trespassers. Survival goes to the simple:
Algae and lichen as comfortable on a mountain as in a birdbath;
or to the unburdened: the golden eagle that
Tacks the drafts up here as easily as it attacks
a bass nine thousand feet below in Crater Lake.
The limited life that needs the defense of symbols
Is like a frigate: it will eventually
Crack, rot, sink unnoticed by the sea.

4.
With the peak under my feet I feel--say it--pique.
Nothing is as expected: no pride of accomplishment, no
Feeling of Zeus-like power from Olympian perception.
I click the obligatory pictures, clinging to the camera
So it won't fall and bounce and shatter into airborne chopsuey
And so I won't fall and slide across the grantie
Like balsa wood on sandpaper when I reach to save the camera.
I feel none of the expected kinship with the golden eagle:
I envy it and hate it as a peasant does a tyrant
As it nonchalantly glides from the valley to the peak.
There is Raton, a tine rate maze of corridors leading
Gritty pick-up trucks to gritty taverns or, yes!
To air-conditioned motels with showers, unprocessed food, and real
Perfumed soap that can dissolve this two-week build-up
Of biodegradable Camp Suds. Raton deserves
Two clicks. I sit, draw my legs to my chest, and rest.

5.
I begin my descent--there are things to do:
Dinner, mapping tomorrow's hike to Raton. Maybe the hammock
Couple could use my extra freeze-dried food. Descent
is easier than ascent. It's less work--I sweat
Less--but it tortures the knees: they split
And crunch, split and crunch from the crashing
Downward steps. But descent is the movement of contemplation.
It has no concerns, no need to choose route, no wishes
For floods, or wings.