The Three-Fifths Domes of the Yosemite, 2021

Oil on stretched canvas

No one ever mentioned that to reach Yosemite,
You have to drive through klan country.
A good preparation for the week of hiking itself:
Trekking through gravel and snow and poison root while
Glancing back intermittently, hoping nail beds won’t crystallize themselves into fine sediment,
That asthma won’t heave bronchial tube into beleaguerment,
Is the only way up, is the only way to reach the idyllic
“LOOK OUT!”
Point.

A good preparation for entering heaven (allegedly):
Slogging through bramble and pitfall,
Circumstance colliding with might, and winning,
Is the only way up, is the only way to pass through the eye of a needle to be modest enough that your ribs touch?
Is this the only way? And what of the meek,
Who inherited the earth?

A good simile for a poem, as in:
As much as I would love to debut a sparkling waterfall,
You’re going to have to trudge through the muck with me, and for you it will be uphill,
Ducking bullets and slingshot acorns meant for another skull. Don’t forget to smile!

A good simile for a poem, like,
You have to like it, you know? Or else, how will we reach the point
Where you look up at me, and behold my carved beauty, refracted through jagged rainbow?
How will my conservation be girded by the people who climb my back
To simply marvel at the view above me and litter footsteps back down my spine?
If this is, in fact, the only way up,
The only way to the mountaintop,
Why does the trash here last longer than the hikers who expend so much to reach it?

Why is the horizon, instead of my wide and weathered crest,
The backdrop of so many other future self-portraits?