Under Snow

They say it sounds like thunder 
when snow breaks
from the crag. Avalanche

safety training will teach you
to put a hand in front of your face 
to create an air pocket

but he never got the chance. 
By the time the slide 
stopped he couldn’t move.

This is how fast
I imagine it. The bruises, 
the breaking branches,

the ephemeral crystal 
of his last thought 
melting without record.

Would I really want to know it, 
the peace or terror of it?

*

I’ve never been a miracle. I’ve never 
been a part of a convoy
bringing a survivor off a mountain.

Though I really wanted to be.
The stretcher, the patrol, the relief 
pulled out of nothing.

I have only listened to the crack
in my sister-in-law’s voice as she said, 
“He took one last run alone

and never came back.
The kids and I were at the lodge 
waiting.”

There was nothing holy 
when we hacked
his phone locator.

The fifteen-foot snow probes 
needled the nothing.
Search and rescue found

the ground too unstable 
to keep looking.
We flew home.

*

When the sun glinted 
off his ski tips 
months later

his GoPro was still 
attached to his helmet.
We didn’t watch the footage.

But I dream of that recording 
often. When I do, my brother 
speaks to me,

he says There was no time as reggae 
music from his ski playlist
bops in the background.

He says Here is my hand.

*

At the viewing of his body,
the undertaker had put white gloves 
on my brother’s hands.

All of us there, 
complicit in the oddity
—like childhood—

indoctrinated as we were
to think of decay as our own 
personal failure. After that

I could only think of his hands 
in those archival gloves, holding
something temporary and delicate:

a single snowflake.

*

A friend heard my brother’s story 
in an avalanche training course: 
an example of unfamiliar terrain,

of believing too much in your skill. 
Holding beacons, discussing specs, 
purchasing avalanche airbags

off Amazon, students floated
to the surface of not me. The mind’s eye 
buoyed by exceptionalism.

If they were in that situation, 
they would be the hero
or, at the very least, saved.

*

I know what you’re thinking: 
preventable tragedy. He shouldn’t 
have been off-map alone.

He should’ve had a beacon.
He shouldn’t have gone
for one last run. You never go

for one last run. I know 
you don’t want to, but
imagine it—each outstretched 

prism of snow, his last breath.

Read more from Issue 23.1.