Devon Balwit
We Went Willingly
All those climbers peeling off the North Face—
Broken rope. Rock fall. Avalanche.
Slip. Wrong carabiner. Storm. Reading,
I get vertigo, press a hand to my chest,
heart like a rock hammer. Ting. Ting. Ting.
A region of unquiet weather.
The dead, younger than I, wanted,
beyond measure, to summit. To add their names
to those who reached the peak.
Some set off with bread alone. Some took
no jacket. Some declined help when needed.
Some bedded down in snow caves
or spent the night clipped upright to rock.
One poor man stood for days on a ledge
awaiting rescue before the wind
swept him from his perch and he succumbed,
dangling over a year in harness, a draw
for the hotel guests below who watched
his body sway when the weather cleared.
To those who don’t feel it, there’s no explaining
the lure of extremity, the slog
past delirious, the summitting,
the giddiness that takes us down
the far side at three a.m. to accolades.
Before we begin, we coil our rope
and sharpen our crampon tips. We visit
the graveyard at the mountain’s foot,
saluting each monument to the failed
attempt then creeping upwards,
leaving our scat on the snow.
Either we will arrive, or we will
be gathered up. There’s no question
of avoiding the mountain.
Devon Balwit is the author of A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Poets Reading the News, The NewVerse News, The Ekphrastic Review, Peacock Journal, and more. For more of her poetry, reviews, collections, and chapbooks, visit her website, devonbalwitpoet.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.