Thanks all for taking a look at this. I was curious to see how much of it would connect.
It began as a fairly straightforward effort to convey the fun I’ve had learning to ski. I was 50 when I first went with the family and my eldest was 10. So it all started rather late for me. I absolutely loved it, and have been every year since then. Sadly, my skills have never progressed much beyond poor, but I have set my sights on making it to “average” one day.
The title is my own little joke on the Beatitudes. The poem began there. It seemed natural to weave in some more holy references (skiers can get oddly evangelical), and scripture leads to inscription and that leads back to the tracks that skis carve into the piste. The wedding cake simile began as a simple observation from a ski gondola, but since skiing has been at the heart of so many happy times for me over the past 20 years in the company of family and friends, it seemed natural to extend the metaphor.
Hi David, thanks for stopping by. Yes, those are the themes. Life is one long skiing trip.
Jim. The “map as a big as a mountain” does follow on from the previous stanza, so I have taken on your suggestion and ended S5 with a colon. They do put up enormous piste maps outside the skilift stations. I also meant the stanza to imply a sense that the view of the ski trails you get from the top (esp on chair lift) themselves look like life-size maps, being pure bold white and working their way through dark woodland. And the prospect the map opens up is one of excitement and apprehension ahead of you -- right now or further along in life’s adventure.
You (& John) are very probably right that I need to lose a hunk from S7-11. They are all about the peculiar mechanics of skiing in which at one moment you are bracing against centrifugal force and the next are wholly unweighted as you move across to the next turn. I am likely to lose the reader by getting too self-absorbed by it. But thanks for appreciating the detail. It’s a matter of deciding which of the darlings is pruned away.
No need to apologise John. There may be less going on it than you think. Much of it is about learning to master and embrace an extended fall and to turn into something graceful (or in my case something survivable). So its less “one damn thing after another” than the same thing said slightly different ways. At the end the narrator and companion are carried off to the next adventure by a ski chair lift which always strikes me as a sort of fairground ride, so why not a ferris wheel?
Thank you for the thumbs up Annie. I also think I can read it out loud in a way that sounds better than it looks on the page.
And (Carl), unless I’m sticking strictly to a well known form I’m never quite sure whether it should go in metrical or non-met. Eg Unless I’m trying to write a limerick then my natural default is iambic, and there are usually rhymes and alliteration. The line lengths tend to vary and when posted in metrical they sometimes attract questions. I’ll happily go where I’m told.
S2 adopts the metaphor taken from the title, implying skiers (believers) on the piste below the lift are part of some strange sect performing odd manoeuvres on the snow and repeating them over and over for the greater glory of whomever. And the “practising their lines” does indeed have the connotation of going over your wedding vows, as well writing your own signature on the already written piste.
Thanks for spotting the typos, now corrected.
I guess the yoyo is an unlikely metaphor. (Skiers rarely head back uphill!) but there is a sense of repeated tension and rebound.
Piste-makers. More typically called piste bashers or groomers in UK circles. But the sense of piste making as diligent human endeavour is also there. And I hoped the quiet ending might be an echo of the actual beatitude “Blessed are the peace makers.”
Thanks again
Joe
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