The Job That Scares You Most

Lyrics

Five hundred and sixty-two metres of bare basalt.
The Tasman Sea hissing below.
Tucked beside a brass plaque, left here in 1965.
A folded paper, brittle with salt.

Not a map of this place.
A map of the moments the world fell away.
Here, the branch that broke over the creek.
Here, the rooftop vertigo, age seven.
Each point marked with a shaking hand.
And I think of you, Hank, in the Swiss Alps.
Your calm voice through the cable-car speaker,
"Enjoy the view."
While your own map is screaming.

Do we choose the jobs that scare us most?
Do we ride the wire over the one thing we can't stand?
To prove it can't kill us?
Or just to feel the drop, every single day?
Why carry this all the way here?

I unfold it more. Here's a nightmare, sketched in pencil.
A ladder with missing rungs.
A bridge made of glass.
Each one a station in a private pilgrimage of dread.
You sell the panorama, the majestic peak.
You check the safety latches with a steady hand.
But inside the booth, your knuckles are white.
You are Fear of Heights Hank, greeting the tourists.
Living the punchline.

Do we choose the jobs that scare us most?
Do we ride the wire over the one thing we can't stand?
To prove it can't kill us?
Or just to feel the drop, every single day?
Why leave this map right here?

You brought your fear to the tallest sea-spire.
A needle against the sky.
Where the stick insect, that impossible ghost, came back from the dead.
You left your story next to the only other one.
A brass plate the size of a hand.
John W. Earls, 1965.
Two testaments on a rock no one was meant to climb.

The paper trembles in my hand.
The ink is faded.
The question isn't on the map.
It's just in the air.
All this way up...
...just to look down.