Swimmer in the Avalanche

. . . caught in an avalanche, your only hope is to literally swim with the current of the slide. When the snow is still in a kind of liquid state and going up to 200km. per hour, it’s possible to move in it. By struggling like a swimmer in rapids you may be able to reach the surface and stay there, or close to it. So when the movement ends, those tons of snow turn to concrete and the ‘breath-mask’ starts to crystallize and choke you, you’re within reach of help."

–Mountain guide, from a newspaper, Dec. 2002

Caught in the chute’s

thundering tonnage you’re struck

that this is how time moves:

no stoic flow, no old man river, but

the ruck and tumult of seismic tides, Niagaras

burying your barrel into the sinkpool as

now, in the snow, you’re threshing with silent

semi-comic limbs: sped-up and footless

follies in the sluice, slapstick, a cartoon

loser run through the wash, but here no promise

of some weekly revival, in your flux of common trials

(pallbearer’s shoulder, the knock of the auditor)

gaining gravity though always with back-swirling

second-thoughts, nostalgic arabesques, all

ripping your self crossways, like desire–you

shooting like a loose ski through the clear-cut

wood of halfway, even landmark boulders

enrolled now in the general skelter,

and this is a life

or its marrow:

no surface drama like a climber, arc-lit

channel swimmer, yet swimming all the same

down there, fighting upward, you hope upward,

through the whiteout span until

stasis makes you final:

face cramped to a mask, in a morgue

of remorse and small habits or,

snow-cauled, thrust from your chrysalis

into sunlight, the gentian wind

of the pinnacles, within reach again of hands,

wearing your own face now,

and standing

–