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Dream Voice Three quarters of the way looking up to the streaky grey but no rain fell and after fifty steps thick mountain mist drowned the trail the rocks and bushes dripped and my shirt was gripped by the dampness the track forked to angled rock climb but steps to the right found a dead end with a cliff to one side then a voice shouted "leave the precipice at once!" shattering a whispering dream-voice that suggested an embrace of the cubed rocks below and to contemplate a half day wait for a winched stretcher and a distant voice crashing the slope to the highest plateau where silver track markers blurred at close range nine hundred metres above the sea with nothing seen but the wet-black stunted trees and a white painted trig point walking as ghosts in the drifting cloud I dumped my pack on the summit floating in a cloud kingdom a sweating chest and the spinning October snowfall |