Skiing

My mother skies like an Olympian,
diving down moguls of locked memories,
navigating knee replacements and broken bones.

When she fears she might hit a tree,
she makes angels in the powder, dodges
chronic arthritis with pain pills and lightning.

In the warming hut of her kitchen, she works
on jigsaw puzzles of kittens and blue sky while
sipping hot chocolate and nibbling donut holes.

Her shirt is red checked like the wallpaper
in her kitchen, and when she zips down each slope,
out of bounds, her hand-knit scarf tied

in an unreadable knot, she becomes a blur,
a French Impressionist dancer with a couple
of pieces missing, a potpourri, a broken mirror.

She stands up from her wheelchair clutching her cane—
a monogrammed rod, a wooden crutch, a tree branch,
an extended piece of willow, a bleached crow—

then plants it like a pole, attempting to descend
the stairs one more time, each icy step a flag of victory,
a fast blue slope, a thrilling dangerous carousel ride.

She carves her boots into the carpet like orthopedic
ornaments, slowly slides her patella, joints and femur,
her titanium knees, her aching shoulders, summoning

her courage, then points her skis towards the bottom
of the mountain—where the powder and ice await,
where we all will be someday—closes her eyes, and lets go.

Published in The Caregiver (Holy Cow! Press, 2018) and Lilipoh (Winter 2020)