No Safety Line

Hand over hand, finger by nail, 

he creeps over rocks stained

a hundred different shades of iron: 

yellow ochre - black rot - red rust.

Cheek wet with the moisture rising 

through stone and bruised by the grain 

of shells and sand cemented 

in the shadow of the overhang: 

a whole seabed torn up and flipped

in the folding and wringing out

of old sediments, 

ground in the mill of the Earth 

as a hundred million stars flew by.

He hangs with the world spinning 

and searches for a handhold

on the wounded hill.

He shuffles, toes to rock, along

a horizontal fracture; 

below a black pool dilates

like an eye opened in the rocks.

In the thorny tangles of the green iris

he could fly

in reflected clouds 

rough as the old ocean.