Up Dragon's Teeth Mountain

''the fascination of what's difficult....'' William Butler Yeats

So I climb the slope

and climb and climb,

leap streams,

trip on roots,

stumble over stones,

hand over foot up cliffs --

No metaphoric mountain,

this is high

and hard.

Yet when I pause,

banish ache and vertigo

a moment anyway,

I note shaggy lichens,

trillium, violets,

the lizard's sprint.