Gothics via Orebed Brook

DAVID CREWS

The idea of the slide, the ladders, 

the cable, the cliff-walking, probably 

stings more than the bee itself. Still 

there was no shame turtling up the peak 

of Gothics, far below a graveyard of trees

remnants from last year’s hurricane. 

At 4736 feet above sea level 

anything seems possible. Your boots grow 

wings and the urge to touch the sun 

is there. Spires now visible from the summit 

of Armstrong, at Upper Wolfjaw

it was all Giant. There’s something about 

these mountains, the glacier-carved deep 

valleys, ridges rising together, peaks

so close they bring an intimacy

to the landscape. And just as quickly

you drop down into dark forest and see

these woods dwell in another element

and if you stop walking, listen

the silence reverberates back.

DAVID CREWS (davidcrewspoetry.com) has poems published or forthcoming in The Greensboro Review, The Southeast Review, Paterson Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, The Carolina Quarterly, 5AM, and others. Essays found in Adanna Literary Journal and SPECTRUM. Most recently, he was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. He both teaches and lives in northwest New Jersey. This poem is part of a chapbook manuscript that catalogs the hiking of “The 46ers,” or the forty-six highest mountains in New York’s Adirondack State Park.

The Adirondack Review

WINTER 2013