Literary Skiers 19

 

The morning I woke up, Metaphor was laying next to Dellwood's fire bed, frozen.

I saddled up Abraham Lincoln and Killdeer and started riding. No tracks to follow, I rode north and west. Rode with the firewater brandy, rode into the Craters of the Moon. Lava rock, snow and ice, slabs of Indian warriors, wind.

Rode in circles. Kept going. Going where I didn't know. Ten more feet. One step at a time.

I pulled my hat down and covered my face with the scarf I'd made two holes in, and wore the blind man's glasses. Yellow snow--a world of yellow snow.

Mountain peaks growing into other mountain peaks. The crooked trail not a trail at all except that we were following it, sometimes the path no wider than Killdeer and Abraham Lincoln, my feet sticking out over the forever blizzard going down.

Nights by the fire, red-under-black embers at my head, moon at my eyes. I did not close my eyes. Did not open them.

No single intention.

No Dellwood's shiny dime.

My errant knight.

My little pip.

My brave hero.


--Tom Spanbauer, from The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, 1991