I saw a goat up on a mountain
I watched her from a distance
precariously climbing up
on a course of her persistence

Snowy-crowns and complex clouds
a calling to the soul
maybe not the top she sought
neither refuge nor control

She was younger then but strong
tense but not timid
she'd been treacherously summered
dangerously wintered

With an upside up and a downside down;
a master climber and a risker
a sister soul, a speaker
an old age thought resistor

By chromosome and floating fog
she was tentative but not falling
like a gravity doctor thesis
defying Steve Hawking

But through the miss's mist
she seemed informally not normal
Jumping tall and wide
like a careless young immortal

I saw her skating then, in pirouettes

like a wonderful young Fleming

out there on the precipice -
dizzyingly ascending

Hypnotizing, mesmerizing
no understudies, no rope nets
just icy flashes and fog curtains
a sometimes soul subrette

But frequent streaks of brightness showed
blinding sunshine
searing white
melting ice and warming hearts
leaving spots upon our eyes

In silhouette
she stood on top
a conqueror, acting rested
yet another pinnacle
she fearlessly had bested

Then standing in the summit's cold
she peered back down the path
and saw a bird and heard a chirp
and her reality was recast

It was a small thing, rather puny
to this conquering mountain climber
a needy little puppet bird,
a Sesame Street headliner

But the chirp became an urgent call
a powerful magnet source
greater than the summit's siren
this avian counter force

And so these days I see the goat
on the lower mountain tracks
climbing through spring flowers
with the bird upon her back

But when the bird gets big enough
and it won't seem very long
He'll fly her back to the summit's crest
and chirp his saving song

#mountain

Goat Pirouettes