Skiing is believing: embracing
the fall-line like the next contraction.
Focus, breathe, follow the thighs
down the blinding slope. Rhythm
is all. My instructor is
an artist, but practical.
Relax, turn...trust your weight
to the downhill toe. Cramped
in their boots, my frozen feet
can't hear. I ache with failure, muscle-deep.
Skiing is fun, I tell myself.
But to turn, to birth, to believe defies logic.
Sheer faith, the trembling size
of my big toe will move this mountain.
More alive than your average giant
a towering pine rocks with birdsong,
A dozen birds? I'm talking hundreds.
Cabled roots groan and s-t-r-etch
beneath sky so new one expects
hymns, fanfares - but this racket!
Curiosity reels me in:
if two hundred lusty swallows
launch themselves skyward
like so many roman candles,
will that rugged mast of a tree
sail off through the vast, celestial sea?
VROOM...a passing semi spits gravel
and the darn birds jump ship -
no teamwork, no plan -
just a long scribble of feathered arpeggios
twittering across the dawn.
I pocket a feather, stride home.
plump
as a crocus
in purple silk,
the gloved woman
with tongs plucked
the little pine cones
from a perfect lawn
with no idea
she was a
poem.
