A smooth bald shark fin of basalt,
five hundred feet high. Climbing it
to impress my friends, I feel as slight
as a flea on an elephant.

The hot light dulls me. The rock
sizzles wherever flesh touches
its vast indifference. Easy enough
to stick to the heavy angle:

but I’ve deployed more senses
than I possess. The slab rises
from the campus of MIT.
Curious students watch me climb.

None of them has tried to spray-paint
clever graffiti at the summit;
none has even attempted to scale
the lower slopes for a view

of crew teams ruffling the Charles.
Somehow this dense black monument
repels everyone under sixty
and reserves itself for old climbers

like me. At last I reach the crest,
an arête honed like a guillotine,
and look down and wave to my friends.
But they’re chatting among themselves,

indifferent to the sight of me
plastered atop the great black slab
they encouraged me to ascend.
Rodger, Carole, Mark, Anna, Fred—

they cluster like fruit as I slide
gradually down the hot flank,
my fingertips scorched and my toes
creaking in sweaty wool socks.

After half an hour’s slow descent
I stand quaking on the sidewalk.
My friends decide to notice me,
ask where I’ve been. I gesture

at the basalt ridge but it’s gone—
the white summer air shivering
above a construction site littered
with diesel cranes and structural steel.

Too bad. It was a glorious climb,
and if that shark fin should erupt
somewhere else I’ll do it again,
setting all those senses tingling.