DOWNHILL SKIER

by John Field

From a mile away
He looks like a black crumb
Defacing a white tablecloth.
Above him a wreath of blood-red clouds, 

Perhaps an omen, because this is not
Your average mountain. Below him
A vertical drop so steep
It falls away to depths invisible.
This is the setting our crazy gambler
Is willing to barter
The rest of his life for:
The chance to win or lose everything
In a minute or two.
Wild to be wreckage forever
If it comes to that
Because safety is in excellent health 

Anyplace else but here,
He’s popping sweat
As he surrenders his fate to gravity
And in a kind of mystical
And thundering ecstasy
Blasts the breath right out of the air
As he plunges straight down
His immaculate heaven of secret snow 

Stranger than death and soft as wool,
His romantic and shining grace
A silk-tight blur against the slope
As he swerves in and out
Of the huge gray presence
Of tremendous boulders
Which specialize in manufacturing ghosts, 

But fails to notice the snow-capped crown 

Of a giant’s tooth,
And just like that his skis get tangled up
In the vice-like grip of its rotten stump. 

Years later each time his friends drop by 

To say hello on limping summer afternoons 

And winter nights of ice and snow
They know dismemberment,
Like sex, is intimate, and never stare
At the tucked-in cuff of his missing foot.