(...............11sept) Ascent Poem by Max Reif

Up the dusty path,
up the steep grade,
up and up,
turning around every so often
to look below
at the great valleys and hills
getting smaller and smaller,

and the little colonies of homes,
a thousand, two thousand
clustered in the valleys
and up onto the hills,
red-roofed villas and haciendas
and smooth, grey, mansions,

and more coming into view
the higher the climb,

and the heart faintly sickened
that even in the ascent
there is no way to get away,
no Jacob's Ladder any more
to escape the human sprawl,

no way to capture the prize of climbing,
the emptiness that thrills the heart,
the scanning of a landscape
without a trace of human alteration,

the timeless Somethingj
that renews the spirit —
the glimpse in Nature
of a face that is not our face,

and so the prophet came back
and said unto the people,
'I'm sorry, but I could not get away.'