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On the mountain

 

And so we glide

Left shoulder and right

The forest rising and falling

Beneath us, I pull up

So she comes alongside

And I can watch her

Hold firm, her hair freshly cut

No poles, her strong legs

Bones barely a hundred months

Flesh a match for any cold

 

And the mountain is ours

For this moment ours

The sun behind the ridge, discrete

Like the pistoires who climb the lifts

In slow motion, not to interfere

Not to descend before we claim

The sheets that subside

And are gone to the valley

 

And the forest takes us in

I let her lead, carving tracks

Through the powder of last afternoon

What is piste and what is forest, the boundaries fade

We choose a new path between the trees

I watch her concentrate, her rhythms

Drop and rise, now climb up

And fall again to level, I call

Each while “control the turn” or “weight on the…”

She hears but knows it does not matter

It is just a distant sound

Like the hum of the pistoires behind

 

And I imagine her mind

She says ~it’s great being here, just you and me, on the mountain”

I see through her eyes, cutting our way

Through pine branches and white floor

Like the first explorers

I picture myself as a thirteen year old boy

Having broken from the group, on purpose stayed behind

To claim the mountain for my own

 

And so we emerge

And rising up is the town

In the valley below

Just as far as the speck from the top of the hill

And just as clear

 

 

© 2008 Saul Damelyn

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© 2015 Saul Damelyn - Original Artwork by Laura Copsey -  Website Design by Emanuel Leggo 

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