Climbing the Great Wall of China

I climb the stairs

to where the great wall

breaks its spine

along the grey-green ridge 

of smoke and fog above the Yanshan mountains

and as I rise

I carry nothing more

than a shadow’s weight of daily cares

and as I glance

I am amazed to see

how worn away by walking

are the stones

beneath my feet

how smoothed as though

by water over time

and leather trod

eroded by the come and go

of hordes of trekking solitudes

and as I touch

a single shape of chiseled rock

I feel the slave’s fardel

the spirit burden of a broken life

the fragment of an empirical fear

the horse’s heavy heartbeat

on the warring earth

the blackened hoof

that thunders on the steppe

with arrows singing

in a mind of troubled dreams

I pause 

to let a lucky tourist

take a photograph

his friend 

leans smiling as she breathes

to catch her breath

her bosom heaves alive alive and lets it go

I’m warm enough to wait a while

my quickened pulse

is like my father

at my morning door

he knocks to wake 

an answer from my over-weary bones

and if he’s there, or not

I rise

and seek the purchase 

of a greater height than this

winner of the International Literary Encyclopedia Award for best poem 

(Hourglass Journal)