Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz nomads survive in one of the most remote, high-

altitude, bewitching landscapes on Earth. It’s a heavenly life – and a

living hell.

– Michael Finkel, “Stranded on the Roof of the World”

National Geographic, February 2013

Who knew a world where no one’s ever seen

a tree and most kids die before they’re five?

There’s no road to bring a doctor in –

or vegetables or books or news below

these untamed camps at 14,000 feet.

Parents swathe their pain in opium,

find little joy in much of anything.

They’re off again through late June snow

with herds of sheep and goats, with cranky yaks

bearing everything they own. Four times

a year they search for rarities of grass,

one week above a freeze. Suddenly,

I’m a kid caught in Jersey snow, shoveling

a path across three drifting roads to find

the court beneath the playground’s white.

I need to break from winter’s bind

by carving one clear lane to net and board.

Even if clunky boots slow my glide

and raw hands fail to score, I know

survival’s here: in the joy of play and …

Memories freeze. I’m teetering on

the rooftop of the world where vicious winds

could hurl my ball across the glaciered rills

and people dream of cars. Here a Kyrgyz girl

survives by chasing scraggly hens. A boy

crayons his life with colors cracked and bleached.

Inside a yurt, a toddler barely breathes.

Mothers cry for roads. Summer snow still stings.

I need to find this journalist who knows

a horse costs fifty sheep and yaks can drown

each year in rivers snow-swelled and mean.

I need to ask if nomad girls have learned

to read or smile. Do boys fly off the roof?

Did that toddler die? I need to know

if he can gauge how many shovels

it would take to make the dying stop.