Talking about Ladders
after Ian Starsmore
There is a ladder angled to the roof of the world
where blue darkens
and you cannot hold the footing in your breath for long.
You have a small window
above the Valley of Flowers.
You feel the odds of risking your neck.
Feel the sugar nut brittle edge of a honey gatherer.
It’s like climbing in high heels
and it’s not only your heels that are high
above the Valley of Flowers.
Because you have a spine
you make one for the mountain.
Each bone a pine rung left for the next person.
A ladder to a larder
of snowflakes and honey;
a medicine cabinets of gold and flowers.
Leave a winter geocache for the bees
and their small alchemies
like a kind burglary.
Edmund Hilary kept a cloud of bees on a long string,
the settle and shift of black and violet
around his mask
like some matter at basecamp.
Think on those men who climbed out of the orangey
up a ladder with a rabbit’s foot on a stick
to pollenate where mulberries now age.
Think about powdering a cheek in a hothouse.
The mountain holds no wishes
as you hold your hand
to the fear of going home empty handed.
This leaving is like leaving a ladder somewhere
or leaving just enough honey in the hive for next year.
Judith Lal lives in Norwich. Her poems have been published in various magazines including Poetry London, The Rialto and The Lighthouse. Her pamphlet Flageolets at the Bazaar was chosen as a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Her poems also appear in an anthology The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry.