Upon a shore where gray waves broke and sighed,
Beneath a sky of low and leaden clouds,
The mourning sun rose red, as if it died
Before its dawn, and dressed in crimson shrouds.
And silence lay upon the rotting dock,
Where, black against the dawn, there loomed the rock.

I know not what compelled me to ascend,
Some whisper in the wind, some silent call;
I climbed, and though I feared where it would end,
Each ledge seemed ever eager for my fall.
My hands, grown cold, found hold in cracks of stone,
And upward, ever upward, climbed alone.

Then, halfway up, I felt my fingers slip,
And clung there, trembling, high above the sea,
When on my brow there fell a single drip,
As warm as breath, as soft as it could be.
Another fell, and then another, red;
It was no rain the leaden heavens shed.

What horror waited on the height ahead?
Some voice within me begged me to descend;
But I was pulled, as by a silver thread,
Toward whatever waited at the end.
I found the final hold, the final grip,
And hauled my body up across the lip.

And there, upon that high and windswept hill,
A man lay broken on the bloodied stone,
His eyes wide open, glassy, staring, still,
A jagged rock lodged deep in flesh and bone.
The very cliff that I had dared to climb
Had made the kill, and waited, biding time.

I dared not move; I dared not even breathe,
But stared upon that pale and upturned face.
The wind moaned low; the waves roared far beneath;
And in his features, something I could trace:
A brow, a mouth, a look I almost knew,
As if my own reflection stared me through.

I staggered back, a scream upon my tongue,
And felt the ledge give way beneath my heel;
A moment on the empty air I hung,
And lifted up to God my last appeal.
In life he stood above me; then, too late,
I fell to meet him, eye to eye with fate.

The gray waves break upon the rocks below;
The mourning sun sinks low, and bleeds, and dies;
Upon the height, the winds of evening blow
Across a face that bears my own dead eyes.
Two strangers, bound by one unfinished climb,
Now rest in God’s own keeping, out of time.