Steve Myers: “Ascending Ben Lomond”
ASCENDING BEN LOMOND
Forty clicks out of Glasgow,
in my father’s army jacket
and wool enough
to wick away the rain,
with a canvas rucksack
and walking stick, I set to work
ascending Ben Lomond,
the mountain that lowered
over the famous loch,
winning each yard
with a kind of weasel-scuttle
that went much slower
the higher I got, no thought
to spare for whiskey
with Mavis that half-seven
at the Dour Scotsman,
or the lovely something
my landlady promised
for back at her Hillhead flat,
or the wineskin and bread
I’d packed, or the black-bordered
letter I’d gotten from home—
only those lines from Mackay Brown
I said out loud to keep the rhythm
going, though by that time
I was practically crawling,
cursing the gorse, the riprap,
the sheepshit, and off the path,
the dead rabbit that had quit
on me when all I’d wanted
was just one touch
of his lucky shinbone
for the push to the top,
only now I’d have to figure it
on my own—where to put
pressure, where to leave off,
the next best place
to plant my mudslick boot.
Steve Myers has published a full-length collection, Memory’s Dog, and two chapbooks. A Pushcart Prize winner, he has had poems previously appear in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Gettysburg Review, Poetry East, Southern Review, and Tar River Poetry. His manuscript entitled Last Look at Joburg won The Tusculum Review’s 2015 Poetry Chapbook Prize.