Thin Air for David Breashears Poem by Rip Brown

They did not say Mallory fell,
or banged his head on boulders, or
choked on thin air. They said
he disappeared.

Seventy years later a slam of people
descended
from the highest point on earth,
scattering gum wrappers and school notes
beyond cramponed corners and verticals.
Lightheaded, blissful, some chose
Not to climb down, or if they did, did so
in sleeping bags made of snow,
draped on frozen rope lines belayed below
queer tents shaped like anemones.
Only one rose back from the dead.

A boy grows up surrounded
by wide country in the Rockies.
And from a high peak in that nowhere seeks to find
a man he rarely sees.
Later that boy, now a man, climbs Everest
searches beyond whole continents
to find in thin air,
the man he's barely seen.

Air waves from the future arrive to him in jet stream
From his past, echoes pass him from behind,
he hears the voice of a child cry
Take me down from here this time.

And never return.