Huangshan

The yellow-grey granite fingers

Cradling me have disappeared. I stand on

The edge of nowhere, stone steps jutting out

Like pimples on coarse umber skin,

Above and below me only lapis lazuli sky.

Meandering mist on the receding horizon

Lifts the hazy voices of the thousands

Of tourists below me, dancing white flecks

Kissing my eyes. I am, for a minute,

Struck blind. Climbing upwards, my lungs

Are squeezed to the brink of emptiness,

My mouth gasping for thicker air.

The purple fascicles of pine trees start

Piercing through the foggy veil, revealing

A world of translucence, vernal sunlight

Making mirages out of mountain ridges,

Flickering when I brush them with a palm.

Beyond, jagged shadows paint chiaroscuros

On a glistening cambric backdrop.

I reach

The bridge at the top of Lotus Peak.

A sulphur-breasted warbler swoops in

To decapitate a praying mantis hugging

A rotting bough. Perching itself on the bannister,

It stares at me, memories of the other

Seventy-two peaks encased within

Its swivelling eye. It grooms its chartreuse

Feathers, ruffling slightly in this biting wind,

Dark, trident-shaped streaks flowing

On its head like capillaries.

I remember

My father telling me that when he was a child

My grandfather came back from the Korean War

And found his wife with another man in

The living room, kissing on that magenta carpet

I have stood on many times. The next day,

At dawn’s first whisper, he trekked

For forty minutes past the pink begonias,

The thousand-year-old Greeting Guests Pine,

To this snow-draped bridge and jumped off.

I grab the corners tight enough to cut skin,

Peering down at the smaller granite peaks

That are visible again, metronomes to the warbler,

Now singing in C Major. The clouds carry its tune

Up to a sun nailed fast, each note transposed

Into a column of amber light, shining on my

Grandfather’s face as I see him leaping

From two thousand metres up, into

A sky that has already forgotten his name.