Summit Poem by Leo Yankevich

The summit is the goal, although the way
is thorny and rough. The bark of spruces brushes
your arms as you await the sudden ray,
and beetles pock your skin as water rushes

in the stream beneath the rocky ridge.
It's taken you a half a century
to get this far. Below the hanging bridge,
there is a skeleton and broken knee,

soiled jeans, torn shirt, boots caked with clay and mud,
a little temple, and what looks like a scar.
Yet biding your time was enough, the thud

of your heart now the echo in dry blood,
lips watered by the moon and the first star
weeks after the drought following the flood.