The Smallness of Things

Anchored in the machine of my body

I throw one foot forward and feel the sole of my shoe schlap into the mud of the mountain path

Step-by-step I move upward and onward

Sodden, well-trodden paths both before and behind,

Autumn’s browns blur as my throat fills with sharp mist

Through bubbling tumult I clamber

Over twig and ditch I scramble

Blasting through thorn and thicket

I begin to see the shape of the sky above me

Breaths of cirrus, towers of nimbus 

An entirely different world hangs just above my brow,

A summit yet to be surmounted

Wet-dark earth gives way to cold stone on the ascent

The muddied mountain palette turns evergreen

From my misty throat soft clouds flow

And treelimb lends a hand for steeper climbs

I begin to see a break in the tree line

The stark crown of the mountain exposed,

Windbreath kissing the curls of my hair

Scratching through the last bramble

Eyes adjust to a broad expanse

As pine scent passes through me

Gaze settles on an azure sky falling off the edge of the world

A far-off storm cloud rolls across the horizon

While from here I’m just a mark on a mountaintop,

Only birdsong and windwhistle can reach me

The blue darkens the further outward you look

Endless as eyes stretch into ether

Yet I can feel the weight of the earth beneath my feet

Rooted in everything

Here at this meeting of stone and sky I can step outside of myself

See the smallness in all things

I'm a linguistics student in London, and have never been able to stop thinking about the first time I saw a mountain - I wondered why all of a sudden the sky had turned green.