Father,
you have led me to the peak
of a mountain where the air
is streaked with red-orange sun,
and pointed with your blue wing
to all the other mountains
whose names I have known
but never imagined within reach.
Please teach me one more time,
Father, not only how to glide to each
and work my way to their icy tops,
but how to first make a hole
in the snow beneath my feet,
how to kneel under the hard sky
and take as many deep crisp breaths
as I need to fill my belly
as I scratch our name by my toes.