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Lured by East Rock

Alex Honnold free soloed up Half Dome
I watched the video from the comfort of my home
I marveled at Catherine Destivelle, when Verdon's edge she trod,
But in New Haven, East Rock lures the unskilled clod.

That rock was made before the continents split
Dinosaurs once munched the plants that grew on top of it
Fast forward time's tape 200 million years
Below the rock New Haven plus Yale then appears

Laws ban climbing up that 300-foot wall, for safety's sake
But I started up one time, on a long lunch break
I pulled myself up just a few feet, then sat on a ledge
Viewed New Haven stretch from base to harbor's edge.

Then I realized I had to get down, I had been really dumb.
Those days people didn't carry phones, I could have used one
I got a mood to dance down, a kind of opiate attack
Then I forced caution, stretched a leg, found a crack.

Others think big and try to climb the whole thing
One Yale woman, for instance, felt the lure, then the sting
She ended up barely hanging on, called 911 on her cell
Firefighters lowered a man, but was there time before she fell?

Firefighter Jay Schwartz dreaded seeing her fly by his own rock seat
So he did a free climb to within 10 feet of her, then fell 60 feet!
He survived, minus a tendon, faced a long rehab ahead
The moral is - she took the risk, but it was Jay Schwartz that bled.

Others before and after keep climbing that East Rock face
One was billed 6000 dollars, his folly a disgrace
There's a right way to take a risk, and exciting cliffs to climb
But you have to avoid the wrong terrain, and spend the learning time
Any fool can get himself in a bind that others cannot undo
If that woman learned one thing at Yale, she learned that this is true.

Copyright © Mark Springer | Year Posted 2024

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