Meteora
Single shepherd descends foot by foot
along knife-blade of an edge
below the range's highest ridge,
describing a lost corner of time
by his whole angle of decline,
bisecting the grey rough rock of earth
from the great lavender reaches of heaven.
Miracle, his feet do not tear
in the harsh rasp of the craggy heap.
The very fierceness gentles him --
able, quiet, to beguile his sheep
into the shadow of the steep defile
(the flock already sweet with scrubby thyme
that thickens all the misty air).
His village ahead, buttressing sky --
fastness tethered to netherworld
by the faint fiction of bridges,
civilization's fragile filigree.
Here, landed delicate as an ark
in arms of Ararat
to deposit a tribe in the teeth of the world,
the herder's high home:Â anchored in stone,
at the same time soaring.