Snowboarding

For the first time, I returned home

with a wrist that has no feeling,

a gimpy knee,

every dam bone in my body aches,

and remembering how I floundered

down the slope

like an apoplectic fish,

watching my glasses fly one way

and my goggles another, and

landed head first innumerable times,

and I watched through snow filled eyes

as the last shreds of my ego rolled down

ahead of me, only to be schussed over

by graceful grannies and silly five year olds

that had no problem staying upright,

and every manner of human being, both

respectable and not, shredded the shreds

with their competence, and how all I could think was,

“How wonderful!” and I went back

and did it again.

Alix Hellas 04