How was it I did not see that lofty sky before?
And how happy I am to have found it at last.
—Leo Tolstoy
He lived in the house closest to the cemetery
and after a fresh snow
he liked to ski among the headstones.
New graves had an incline and a downward slope
that was gently exhilarating.
If people cared they never said so,
and his tracks were plainly legible,
a practiced signature
leading to and from his door.
He was as honest as the snow.
Old graves had settled and grown flatter
though he could still feel them under his skis.
Some years the snow rose until
even the headstones were buried.
Then the quiet intensified, and he could forget
it was a graveyard
but for those rare occasions when, midstride,
he stabbed his pole into the snow
and struck granite.
Rarely, but sometimes,
he fell: a lapse in concentration,
and then he thought,
“That’s all it takes,” and lying there,
“This is how it will be.”
His skis formed an X at his feet
and the heart he seldom consulted
made itself known to him,
throbbing urgently in his ears:
Get up, get up, get up, get up.