Castellated cliff-face,
limestone battlement
The rocks climb up to the ramparts,
piling on top of one another
as if to dare the next in line:
Jump! Jump!
Then finally they plunge away,
five hundred feet at a leap
From here everything
falls away in green gulches
and pine-tree precipices
and spires of stone
I wave to the nearest tower,
greetings to the eagle! He keeps watch there
His amber eye misses nothing—
quintessential watchman,
suited by nature to his sentinel-station
Smoke tendrils like lazy grey ribbons
from the lodge in the valley below
At this height the vapors dissipate,
cartwheeling on a thousand zephyrs
Zeus and Aeolus
keep company in this place
Where two kingdoms meet
I look down from the top of the world,
Or what seems like it at least—
for I can see in the distance
heights even higher than these.
August 2010
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