Avalanche

I found the following piece of writing a few winters back, pasted to a coffee can within a snow cave that BGR had set up....fully stocked with booze, food and a radio that received the Navajo station quite well.....Black Flag followed by Hank Williams Sr followed by Parliament Funkadelic....it was quite the happening, with a full kitchen, sleeping berths and view of the dawn that never quit.  In any event, I've utterly failed at finding out who wrote this gem...if you know, please let me know so that I may give them due credit.  So in honor of the first snow of the season on the Kachina's, I give you Avalanche. The pictures, mine; the words for now, belong to the wind:

I dated an actor once

And asked her how to trust someone who made her living

At deception

She told me she was much less suave as a real woman

But the first time we had sex

The smile never left her face

The perfectly executed orgasm.

Photo - Troy Marino, Skier - maadJurguer

And yesterday in our town, an angel committed suicide

By swallowing the barrel of a shotgun.

She dressed in white and blessed us daily,

The preschool, the local potter's wheel,

The drunks in the bar where she sipped white wine.

After she died we read she wasn't an angel after all,

Just a mother of three from a small town in Arkansas.

Now we walk the streets looking over our shoulders

In case the blessings weren't for real either.

Photo - Troy Marino, Skier - maadJurguer

"What does it mean?" you asked.

When we passed the homeless man, again

Eight blocks, ten blocks, twelve blocks down

He was our oracle

With wild black hair and a Rolling Stones t-shirt

But I knew he was not an oracle, for he was John Kirby

Who carried a limp, blue backpack and kissed the hand of grace one night

But that was not right either

for Kirby froze in the cemetery

Last winter

Remembering beauty and talking to sparrows

During these long winters

The local avalanche forecaster tells us

We will see stability where we want to see it.

Tells us if we desperately want to make first tracks,

We will find safety where there is none,

With blessings, oracles, and second chances,

We step to the crest, turn our heads from the wind

And push forward

Ignoring the breaking snow at our backs