[Joe Crocker]

Blessed are the piste-makers

Steep above the woodpiles, trees and houses,
our yellow bubble, rising,
follows other yellow bubbles in a row,
climbs the tiered wedding cake, the royal icing,
over dark and studded slabs of cliff,
to strike the blue, the white, the glare and glow.

Below us are believers, practising their lines.
Vouchsafed the space to meditate on scripture,
they follow paths that are already written.
And sign their sinuous inscriptions.

Uncoupled, then the slow-down slide of doors,
the top and out. The ticking off
of helmets, zips and buckles,
goggles, poles and gloves.

The clattered slap of skis on pack
and sprung trap clicking in. We push
into the wide bright world.

A fresh-made bed which creaks beneath us,
teeters on the brink that thrills to meet us.
We hang and gulp at where it leads to,
shocked at what it shows:

a map, as big as the mountain,
of all that lies ahead.
Here be dragons. Fear and fortune,
waiting to be read.

A shy exchange of looks, a question asked.
The softest shrug towards the deep, and down
we go. We know there is no coming back.

A quickening toward the edge, a running out of room.
Lean in, look round for refuge and you ground.
Lean out, look straight and make your fate your own.

From fits and starts of danger, safety, danger,
we knit a lithe calligraphy. We learn
to carve a stroke that feeds upon the fall,
and keeps us cradled in a cursive turn,
continuous, unpunctuated, endless.

Each planted bend digs in against the curd.
The sun behind our backs throws shadows
from our feet. Confetti scatters
right above our shoulders.
Right and left and right among
the moguls and the rollers.

The playing out and reeling in,
of poise and peril, self-belief
and panic, coax the yo-yo’s spin,
transforming force to flow, squeezing movement
from momentum. Load rebounds as lift
and scores another flourish on the script.

I have dreamed of flying.
We are skimming, sliding
together on the edge of air,
deliberate, undying.

And though we’re not the first to try this way,
-- others have rehearsed it all before
and know it like a psalm – it still wants saying.
It begs a proof, a puzzle to resolve.

We pause to get our breath and giggle.
The girl invites her brother to outsmart her.
He chases down her laughter
as it calls across the hill.
Carefully, we follow after.

A fairground chair swings round to take us on.
The skittered rasp of edge on corduroy and ice,
the wind and scrape and whooping are all gone.
Its rumble makes a quiet, quiet promise
of more. And more to come.