for Peter Howard
It’s what he said,
edging his orange Rossignols into
the white shoulder
of the mountain
a perfect cut
our breaths hung in
sub-freezing clouds
words unformed
as he spoke:
body english.
It’s a spell, we knew
magic that lets you dance
with the mountains,
runes in the snow also
that he drew with the tip
of his black ski pole:
overlapping S shapes
nested like spooning lovers.
We all leaned in knowing
gravity is no kind lover
it’s the stuff of planets,
supernovas and black holes
tugging us down the valleys
tumbling us forward fast
enough for present to
overtake future
for risk and pleasure
to merge.
The sorcery of the cosmos
and the mountain
he explained
was child’s play
the moment when the parent
lets go of the swing
and the child must find
her center, her rhythm,
and her core power
pumping legs back and
forth gathering
her own gravity
in defiance of both
abandonment and
acceleration
of bodies much larger
than her own.
It means, we decided
remembering
some younger heart
we had lost somewhere
along the way before
fear and courage
split into opposite charges
like quarks
when love was a gesture
of swaying opposites
some dance of attraction
and repulsion
that makes everything
sing and sway
in balance.
Also a spell but more
tender than words,
body english:
the touch
of loving feet
gliding linked arcs over
a frozen earth
skin and small muscles feeling
through the fault lines
of speed and progress
that cosmic pull
between flesh and earth
that old lost longing
only the child
and the sorcerer
rehearse
all their way
down the mountain.