Parnassus Poem by Morgan Michaels

They met in the morning as the fog was lifting and the immensity of the place began to dawn. The sky was high and deep and illimitably blue.Together, they walked to the foot of the slope. It was still very early and the top was lost in mist. Its flank was a steep patchwork of ochres and grays, dotted with myrtles and olives. The road led to a trail that thinned to a footpath that ran through the trees, but left them behind, after a point. Past a certain level they withered, the trees. Too cold at night, too dry during the day, or something.

The path led upwards and the trees dwindled till towards midday they saw a goldfinch- a flash of yellow against an umber field. At one point a stream went rushing by. Then the sky got dark and it rained. Then, it cleared, and they walked another hour. Heat despite, they trekked to the top as long as the earth inclined. Gulches appeared alongside, looking down into which they made out the sun-bleached bones of kine, fallen from the hillside, long dead, and, up in the sky, buzzards circling. The sight of the bones made them quiet and reflective, but didn't alter their course back and forth, across the slope, yet always, by degree, upward.If they trucked on, they knew they would come to the place where the Muses danced, long ago, and where they sang to Hesiod, or somebody. The slope steepened....