Reach for the Summit

You reached up and grasped

the fruit of opportunity,

your mind the only tool you’d been given,

quietly daring fate to try and stop you.

You left that house, clad in graduation robes,

a testament to strength of will as you clutched

his hand in yours. Your family had tried to stop the union,

erasing your name to oblivion when you won.

Soon you found your way to the orange groves,

for a new life in old land. You brought him, who was from

the north, and its climbing towers and

industrial smokestacks still staining soot on his beard.

You built an empire there, in the orange-specked land,

a place where anyone could pick up a pencil,

and you traveled the land, lling your stories with

scenes of great mountains and lakes.

Then you retired to the top of those mountains,

with a garden built by your own two hands.

Trowel sifting the dirt, you conducted a symphony of color,

violets, tomatoes, and sun owers creating mountain song.

But your muscles have weakened, atrophied by time,

like the produce that now sits, unpicked, in your garden.

The outdoor air that once comforted you now grips you like a vice,

leaving work a struggle, uncaring of your passion and promise.

Yet we still see you, as you were,

to evoke those images of orange trees and books, once impressive and now just reminders

of what you cannot be. Your ghts are not yours now,

you left those long ago.

Your own children have come and gone,

leaving the knots to be tied by the only heir you had,

the only one who listened, that the mountains are calling,

to face the stars above and reach for the sky’s shining light.