No Bivouac Tonight.
This day’s last sunlight gleams
Beneath gray-furred paws
Of snow, lowering,
Easing the coming storm’s weight
Onto granite cliffs.
You’re not here
To cry “wimp” at me
And haven’t been for ten years.
I nod to the storm’s eye,
Where you were always most alive
And where your spirit lives still.
“Wimp” will serve
As prayer and parting.
I shift the coiled rope
On my shoulders
And head for home.
Robert Walton retired from teaching after thirty-six years of service at San Lorenzo Middle School. He is a lifelong rock climber and mountaineer with ascents in Yosemite and Pinnacles National Park. He’s an experienced writer with published works including historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy and poetry. Walton’s novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction. “Sockdologizer”, his dramatization of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, won the Saturday Writers 2020 Everything Children contest. Most recently, his “Mansa Musa’s Wisdom” was published in Cricket Media’s February, 2022 issue of Spider magazine.
This day’s last sunlight gleams
Beneath gray-furred paws
Of snow, lowering,
Easing the coming storm’s weight
Onto granite cliffs.
You’re not here
To cry “wimp” at me
And haven’t been for ten years.
I nod to the storm’s eye,
Where you were always most alive
And where your spirit lives still.
“Wimp” will serve
As prayer and parting.
I shift the coiled rope
On my shoulders
And head for home.
Robert Walton retired from teaching after thirty-six years of service at San Lorenzo Middle School. He is a lifelong rock climber and mountaineer with ascents in Yosemite and Pinnacles National Park. He’s an experienced writer with published works including historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy and poetry. Walton’s novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction. “Sockdologizer”, his dramatization of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, won the Saturday Writers 2020 Everything Children contest. Most recently, his “Mansa Musa’s Wisdom” was published in Cricket Media’s February, 2022 issue of Spider magazine.