I've been researching, reading and, of course, climbing. The student in me feels I should wait to finish this sort of literature review before I begin attending to creative work. (I am currently reading Helen Mort's most recent collection No Map Could Show Them, based on climbing/mountaineering; more on that in a future post.) But then I saw 'Slimfast' setting a route at the auto-belay area and the seed of a poem was sewn.
This is a draft only; it needs more work, but I'm happy to put it here and let it settle.
The Route Setter
I’ve seen the look in libraries.
I know, too, the the nervy wait
within me when faced with a big
nothing on the empty page.
He has that look now, staring
at the pocked wall, stripped
of holds, holes where screws
had once held them fast.
He steps onto the cherry picker,
flicks the switch that lifts
him toward the ceiling, in fits
and starts, rising above it all.
This slab is his blank page; his poetry.
He works alone, occasionally gazes
out the window to the industrial park
and the line of sky, parked cars.
What enters his route setting:
the smell of coffee from the roaster
a unit away; the taste of chalk;
our shrieks when we lose our grip?
He holds the drill at his hip; a gun-slinger
for the day. He chooses a colour
for a line and plots the moves we will try
next week. We are his characters
and he decides today how we’ll later toil;
how we’ll ascend toward the rafters,
feeling strong and smart; how we’ll fall
little enough to want to try again.