MY LADY OF THE MOUNTAIN

The early morning was golden
in the ancient citadel
of Machu Picchu,
the lost city of the Incas,
as once were her smoldering embers
that danced into dust
and now lay in stoney quiet
in a pocket-sized vessel
adjoined to my heart
like tendrils to a garden wall.

Our wondrous journey together
started twelve years shy of
half a century ago,
and our unconscious ritual of passage
remains alive on love
more fragrant than wine,
and silent promises
inscribed forever in our destinies.

The morning mist
rising from the Urubamba River
a distant 8,000 feet below,
floated like the mythical condor of Peru,
from the Andean peaks of mother earth
to the upper world,
pausing briefly to escort us
up Wyna Picchu,
the young mountain
that overlooked the remnants
and the mystery
of the Inca Empire.

Whatever anxiety I had
about traversing the arduous,
straight-up stairs
carved into the mountainside,
was quickly replaced
with a surge of elation,
and I was entranced
by the provocative power
of the unknown.

In many places, to slip is to die,
but if I reject
change and challenge out of fear,
and if I am not resolute
in my battle against insignificance,
life would pass me by
like a breeze out of yesterday.

For me, but especially my Babe,
who lived and loved life
with profound exhilaration,
the alternative is unacceptable.
With no music left to dance too,
one can easily slip into invisibility,
a fate tantamount to suffocation
by permanent absence.

I climbed on my mission,
until I couldn't climb any higher,
and we were one with the clouds.
It was time to weep without witness.
Instead, I inhaled her essence
along with the purity of her soul
in the rarefied air,
and smiled at her
from the far side of paradise.

A wild orchid is
attached to the wall
on the highest peak of the mountain.
Nearby, a shrub blooms
with multi-coned shaped flowers
that are reddish pink at the base
and white at the top.
Both look down on a miniature version of Machu Picchu
and the sacred valley below.

Florine's ashes,
so deeply treasured and significant
because they are rich with the fragrance
of a quality life lived
with savage passion,
lie at the base of each plant
and render a quiet beauty
to the flowers and the mountain
that never existed before.

The earth took her spirit back
with infinite tenderness.
Her silent shadow,
pressed against the morning flowers,
melted into the immovable sky.

My love flew free
in the Andes Mountains
of South America,
and now lives through eternity
with my lady of the mountain.

© JOHN PISCATELLA