Mt. Hood

Earlier this winter/late fall, a group of climbers got lost in an avalanche in Mt. Hood, Oregon. For some reason this deeply bothered me and continues too. It's very seldom that I follow a news story closely.
I found a peice of prose that I wrote about it in January. Edited it, and now am sharing it.

[Mt. Hood, Where Have You Taken Her Lover?]

I was climbing because there was some part of me hiding up there.
It was a beautiful pennance; I owed it to myself to go.
It's true, the air thins.
It attacks you from the inside, knives in your lungs,
Darting.

I was climbing because I love the distant world beneath me,
Because I believe in something higher

From up high I could see part of you was up there
I needed to claim it for you
Make my way back down

The fog weighed something, darling,
Something heavy and treacherous,
The feeling of bones aching to the marrow.
But the distant world above me,
everything I was searching for
Fell upon me, unexpected
I lost myself then, in my search.

It was cold in its sparseness,
Crippling from the outside,
Sharp darting knives.

I lost something then
But I will keep the remnants in this place, a pennance
With this world distant, beneath me.