Brocken Spectres

Early morning slog up steepness

mantled in mist, moist droplets

dripping from our brows, our noses.

Breathless lest we are too slow,

too late for our own lives.

Cloud-vapour thins as we ascend,

like dry-ice after the show begins,

until we are in clear crystal light,

a low tow-maned sun behind us

as we stand on the cliff-edge peak.

Islands of hill tops bob above

each valley’s ocean of dense whiteness

where tendril waves end at our toes.

And there are our shadowed selves,

long-legged giants projected out

and away for mile upon mile,

stretched and flung across this sea

by broad prismatic sun-shafts.

We hold hands, leap, shadow-box.

We wave like welcoming children.

Brocken Spectres! It sounds like

some Gothic novel alpine fantasia.

But there are our rainbow haloes, 

there our aura-throbbing glories.

Raggedy crows fly up from the brume,

disappearing slowly down again

like shiny black fish rising for food.

Our shadows are still huge, needle-sharp,

on time, punctual for this moment 

as hand-in-hand we move together,

from broken to mended.