Page 33 - WTP Vol. IX #7
P. 33
Measuring
I have lived more days than Mt. Everest
is, in feet above the sea. Though the sea
is rising, which means Mt. Everest
is shrinking. To climb the whole mountain now, as we found it in our tiny time on earth,
we will have to start beneath the sea, somewhere off the Ganges delta, ankle deep
in ashy water, lapped by who knows whose thin residues. Days and feet, whole mountains, oceans, rivers, human waste. They are ours
to measure and be measured by. I’ve heard
the sky is several billion lights years out.
If only we were light. But, then we’d have
no feet. Or days to smolder into night.
Mitchell’s most recent book is Reason’s Dream (Dos Madres Press, 2018). His poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Mudlark, and Innis- free Poetry Journal. New work is forthcoming in Stand, The Lake, Poetry East, and On the Seawall.
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