Ascent, with interruptions At the junction where the path divides I emptied my pockets as instructed: one toy car, red, missing a wheel; one cinema ticket, expired; the number of steps I took today which I will forget by morning. The limestone remembers what granite does not— how light changes everything it touches into something it was not. My son left a drawing on a stone. I left a meeting in a cloud. Both of us kept climbing because the path does not pause for the things we set down along it. At the top there is no top. Just another bend, another elevation, the boxes we carried reassembling into the shape of a house we haven't moved into yet. The ferns told the time. I didn't believe them. They were right.