Chas Weeden

There is no more car, no more home;
No more boat, nor jewelry;
There is no better game, no better food,
No better clothes, nor finery.
...

Ineffable -
Still I write these lines
trite.
A scaffold of words
...

The Kelty one-man tent flaps face Ritter
The night is me and the Sierran darkness
As no moon reflects upon the granite
...

In 762, Li Po drowned after falling into a lake
trying to embrace the reflection of the moon.

Li Po, it is just a reflection -
...

Reaching out to infinitude
when words have come to an end.
Yan Yu
...

Alone, I camp below Cathedral Peak -

God, I know you're not whom we say you are
and you should have a good case for slander -
...

"Just a minute, can't we finish this game,
We may set a record for gold coins claimed, "
Say them to your offer of trowel and seeds -
"Oh, no, I'm dead, another game, please! "
...

I pause to listen to the silence -
I am one with the million befores
and the afters and at great peace
amid the soundless, immense harmonies.
...

The night is warm and her flowers in bloom
A chance to dispatch our covid'd gloom;
Old friends together, our drinks too well known
A chance to catch up instead of alone.
...

Three days and topo,
Drawn circle to stay
Within; can't
Encounter another.
...

Numb your cortex and let her siblings speak,
Dumb her with a dactylic drumbeat
And let the fronted sound put her to sleep.
...

Beauty lives, yea, beauty lives;
Which alone defeats despair.
But what of Beauty -
The mist in the mountains is not,
...

What lives deep within?
Which thoughts, what vitality?
For from these must we emerge,
As there is little without
...

Decry and damn dualism,
for what has it wrought?
Our delusion of soul
of separation and isolation,
...

Children know where first to go -
the easy places where there's
plenty to fill Easter baskets
with simple-foiled chocolates.
...

Right foot into this little dimple that you can toe in on aggressively so it's opposing the left hand, then you can, like, zag over across to this flat, down-pulling crimp that's small but you can bite it.
[From Honnold's climbing notebook.]

For me, the most transcendental feat -
...

The mausoleum echoes my soft steps
Down long corridors of marbled crypts -
My father loved to hike and fish.
...