Tiger Mountain

Today, yesterday,
for a long time now,

no depth seems deep enough
to get to the bottom of anything.

Tomorrow
and beyond tomorrow,

no horizon’s far enough away
to represent a future

instead of a brief extension
to this present we won’t abide much longer.

Join me then as I sit upon this ledge
in the side of Tiger Mountain.

Together we can distrust
anything not cold and damp and immediate,

anything not here and now.  
If there’s no understanding the past

and no getting to the future,
let’s instead seize hold of this granite, these maples,

the thought that somewhere during the climb
we may slip and fall and gain death’s certainty,

and the greater thought that in climbing
we might reach a place where certainty is unimportant.