Your young hands
Small and plump
Feeling their way through
The nooks and crannies
Of life
Asking questions
Echoing answers

Placed on the base
Of a sheer rock face
With nowhere
To go
To see
To believe
Other than
Up

And so you begin
To climb
Gouging
Your pink pinky
The one that always
Asked questions
Echoed answers

Your hands
Still ascending
Climbing
Rising
Are now bruised
Yet calloused
Propelling you
In the only
Direction you’ve ever gone
Up
And up

Pausing along
Your ascent
Letting your wrist heal
You peer
Below your tired self
And into
A vast valley
Of other climbers
Strugglers
Ascenders
Provocateurs
Who all
Find themselves
Asking questions
Echoing answers

So stunned
By the sudden
Emergence of
Other travelers
In a cavernous
Hollow filled before
Only by a dense
Fog
The grip
Of your tired
Yet indurate palms
Loosens for only
A moment

And then
The descending begins

Gone
Is your firm footing (handing?)
Gone
Is the safe harbor
Of a lifetime of ascendance
Gone
Gone
You still
Manage to muster
A question
Yet
The echo
Cannot keep up
With the speed
With which
You are
P
L
U
M
M
E
T
I
N
G

Your hands
Calloused by your clambering
Meld into
Womanly wings
Of wonder
Flapping their way
From vestiges of
Your past
Into the instrument
Of your survival

And then
You soar
Past the cliff
That brought you
Hardships and holes
Loneliness and lacerations
Grief and gashes

You soar
Through the dense fog
Brought to its knees
By the
Grace of the sun

Your thumbs
Always opposable
Never in opposition
Sail you higher
Soaring
In the only
Direction you’ve ever gone
Up
And up
Asking questions
Echoing answers.