...............For Honor, For Faith, For Human Spirit Poem by elysabeth faslund

A prose poem...internal ryhme and alliteration...
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For Honor:

The Old Mountain waited...beckoning eyes to ledges. Snow.
Glistening pure under Sun's shadows.
The Old Mountain lived. In living, breathed. In breathing,
Drummed avalanches.
The Old Mountain, waiting breathlessly, waltzed snow.
Whirled Death.
No face was safe. North, South, East, West. No slope.
Cliff-ledged treachery.
All knew Old Mountain. Its faces. No Spirits of Honor there,
Even those of the Sky.
The Climbers brought Honor with them.

For Faith:

They knew, trusted, one another. Veterans. Battle-hardened
Granite warriors...of spike, boots, rope.
Passed crosses cold...before base camp. Passed. Nodded.
Night. Toasted fallen comrades of old. Slept. Woke.
Broke piled snow. Joked. Laughed.
All knew.
All may not return. Old Mountain sneered.
The Climbers brought Faith with them.

For Human Spirit:

Weeks lingered misery. Camps flowered Old Mountain.
Dotted defiance of past treacheries...crevices, thin-ice deceits.
Night. Some spoke return. Some, exhaustion.
Morning cocooned Climbers. Old Mountain glared. Spit Ice.
Ice split ropes...two fell. While falling, screamed to comrades.
Broken, bloody, snow-traced...final whispers
Of Life.
The Living listened. Eyes met. Heads nodded.
One topped Old Mountain's peak...others limped up
To join.
And, lumps in throats, nodded to snowed lumps below...

'For Honor! For Faith! For Human Spirit!
We dedicate our Fallen to
Old Mountain's defeat! '
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For, while falling, those two saw, whispered
Old Mountain's flaw.
The Climbers passed up, through
Old Mountain's hollow heart...
----------...
One helicopter flew all away. Aloft, they witnessed the
Sway, collapse, of
Old Mountain into itself.