Ascension Lost

image borrowed from bing

Ascension Lost

“No matter how close to yours another’s steps have

grown, in the end there is one dance you’ll do alone.”

--Jackson Browne

Keep on stepping, dude,

or they will attach casters to your broken ankles

and mount rubber wheels on your butt--

nobody can step up until they stand up;

your shadow-self steps tallest at high noon

while alkaline-naked on infinite salt flats;

so circumnavigate the bullshit, you dig?

There is a plethora of small steps

that must be taken before any

damn giant leaps!

We dreamers with artificial knees

and vicious varicose veins can only

gaze longingly at those bitches,

those distant mountains, disdainful foothills

and treacherous ten-story walk ups,

reduced to fantasies, images in paint,

words in poems--

every old mountaineer must acknowledge,

must realize that the killing zone

now resides at sea level.

So crank up the Zeppelin tunes,

tap those tired toes, because cool moves,

daring dance steps have become arthritic twitches,

and those sparkling ivory steps on the Stairway

to Heaven had by God better morph into a

slick escalator if your big backside is ever

to ascend them--

but it really doesn’t matter, does it?

More than likely when you finally take

that last big step to the Other Side,

you will laugh like a lemur 

because somehow

you will have managed to step

in dog shit just before the crossing. 

Glenn Buttkus

October 2013

Posted over on Poetry Jam

Would you like to hear the author read this stepping poem to you?