Beyond Bliss
avalanche training near Bliss State Park
We’ll just drive past. No need to find
the trail recalling January years ago.
It’s June, our old search dogs are dead
as the snows of yesteryear.
No need to find the spot we stood
bundled for adventure; the rote
survival stats, air pockets, triangulation –
burying each other under snow –
just for practice:
learning to read our dogs,
to dig the buried back to life. Stunning,
lovely snow. So cold, the lake so far below.
Daylight turned everything blue.
You volunteered
to be buried, our dogs rescued you
cold, shaky but grinning; alive.
I imagined our clearing slipping downslope
as brief winter sun does, to dark.
We don’t need to find the place
again, we’ll drive on by. Remember how
sun glanced, a slanted, many-bladed sword
turning the white of snow other-worldly.
All the colors of this world.
~ Taylor Graham
from Windows of Time and Place (www.coldriverpress.org)