A Costly Ascent

A Costly Ascent

Katelyn J. Dixon

“ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή”
“The way up and the way down are one and the same.” 
— Heraclitus

It is no small thing to find you here,
Languishing at the ladder’s end of Jacob’s dream.
Long is the night, even longer the mourning;
Yet here you wait, silent as midnight—still
As the stone whose hardness is both pillow and altar.

              Your hands, once lifted in prayer, now grasp
               The bottom rung—hoping to be touched
               By the feet of angels who pass you on their stairway.
               How you wish they would pause, placing
               A cool hand of blessing on the fevered brow of your longing.

                              In the hour before dawn, they whisper their secret:
                             The way up is the way down.
                              All along, you’ve been climbing
                              And you did not know it.
                              Blessed and re-named, you begin again
                              Rung by rung, fumbling towards Paradise.

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Katelyn J. Dixon
Writer & Photographer

Kaitlyn is the creator of Behold and she has been published in The Joyful Life Magazine and Vita Poetica

Photography by Norris Niman