Derek Wright: ‘Climber’

Climber

Since a steep winter walk crocked my left knee
the leg’s stopped talking to the rest of me:
nerves, muscles, brain—they hear its pains

but muffled, like the wires are frozen.
Stiff, it braces itself through daily paces,
lets its fellow, its right-leg man and master,

hustle it home with a stick, a step behind,
the sound of one foot walking, one dragged,
grudgingly lies down in tandem; but in sleep

becomes its own limb again,
goes off for holidays on its own,
shins up the Eiger or Matterhorn.

I dreamed, modestly, of conquering Coot-tha
or, fifty years back, Scafell, the Peaks, Lyke Wake.
My leg has other ideas. One night

left-field toenails rip a blizzard through the sheets,
dig a pit in the bed deep enough
to bury us—senses, sinews, mind and all—

under pillows of white, too deep to hear
the cramponed foot kick away compasses,
markers and maps, or to feel winter

creeping like hemlock past my thighs
and everything nerveless, numb, packed in ice.

Derek Wright