No matter how long we live
No matter how alone we lie
We are all unborn
And all deceased
For the same amount of time
And the same distance from each other
Whatever that distance may be.
Call it eternity. Call it infinity.
But like an ocean and its islands
Eternity is interrupted
By us.
No matter how high up we reside
We are all the same distance from heaven.
A lifetime.
A universe.
But a universe interrupted.
By us.
*
I live forty-five floors above Hell’s Kitchen in the middle of Manhattan.
It is my favorite place on or above Earth.
The view takes my breath away. Every day.
If you visit me, the view will take your breath away.
In such apartment buildings, the elevator is everyone’s friend.
When you visit me, the elevator will be your friend.
When the world below and outside happens to be hell and storming
With squalid snow, hectic hail, incorrigible ice, or rambunctious rain,
I stay inside instead of jogging, walking, biking, or hiking.
I stay inside so as not to catch cold.
So as to stay healthy.
On such days, I walk up the stairwell a few times
For the cardiovascular exercise.
I ascend to stay healthy.
The stairwells in such apartment buildings have no windows and no view.
It is the climb that takes my breath away.
If you visit and walk with me, the climb will take your breath away.
Then I shall cook you a meal from scratch.
If you visit me, you may feel healthy.
*
I grew up near Mt. Wachusett, Thoreau’s favorite mountain, in Massachusetts.
It’s become a favorite climb, even after a storm, branches of pine and birch,
rocks and roots strewn everywhere, a landscape mid-revision.
It’s not one of the holy mountains of the world, like Croagh Patrick in Ireland
which I’ve scaled or Denali in Alaska where I’ve hiked.
But Thoreau walked to Wachusett from Walden Pond and scaled the slope, and
he was a holy man, in a secular sort of way.
I hike to the top, then stroll down, at least once a year. When I happen to be
In Massachusetts.
I even walked to Wachusett once from Walden.
Always I breathe in the view as well as the air’s green perfume.
What exhilaration!
At the top of the mountain, I feel
As if I am on, or even am,
An island in the air and, oddly,
Not so far from either home or
Heaven.
Back at the bottom, spent, I feel
Healthy.
*
I think and feel and care, never far from You.
You are my favorite hope, like a favorite mountain,
Even when I’m confused, even when I’m an island.
After a calamity, not knowing where to turn, I glance up and ask, “Now, what?”
At times from the top of a building.
At times from the top of a hill.
And at times I have heard You answer me.
I thought I heard You answer me.
I’ve heard and hear You answer because
You take my breath away.
Each breath I take
Each blink I make
Is an elevator door slid open,
A button pushed, a panel lit,
A pace down a corridor,
A step in a hike on
A rocky, root-strewn climb
Toward the summit of a desultory life.
Toward the summit, I suppose, that’s You.
There is no down.
But what exhilaration!
And one day,
One year,
After all my years and days are done,
I shall be no longer the interruption,
No longer the island remote.
I shall be forever
Home.
And this is the only exercise, the only true exercise, the only breath truly taken away.
This is the only ecstasy: the thrall of impending rapture.
James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies (just out). His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award.
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THE CITY KEY 