Of Mountains and Microbes

We are comparative microbes, insignificant of thought and deed. Diminished by the raging peak, the ragged arrowhead, laceration poised to rip the membrane of the sheltering sky and make it bleed. How many have braved the ascent, ticks on the silver rock-whales’ spine? Driven to conquer the unconquerable, flags of futility harpooned into the summit nonchalance, some purpose or meaning to define. “Because it’s there.” What reason this to assail the ancient king? Mountains don’t care what microbes do; is this what separates us, curses us Natures’ outcasts, our unknowing of everything? Reflected upon the glass lake surface, still as deaths’ face. An ominous doppelganger, snow-capped colossus remote on liquid, twin peaks of perfect symmetry, attuned to time and space. All may be an illusion, optic smoke, for have the fish not already swam to the top? And descended the other side; despite all the intellect of microbes we are quick to tilt at nothing and we know not when to stop.