no camera that day

blank agenda, my virtual memory
unrecorded, so fantasy and a certain
recalling of holiday habits, take over
January, twenty three, bitter cold

(google almanac reminds me
for my memory is graying too quickly)

a winter’s day in two thousand and
two years after the millennium big bang
winter skiing vacation, no broken tibia
for I didn’t dare anything other than snowshoes
the bitter north wind made the weather
almost perfect

(I offer no detail guarantees, but in other years
white and blue graces the air high
at twenty-five hundred meters)

afterwards, like each evening in our chalet
we sip a certain Bordeaux languorously
lounging in front of the fireplace burning poplar wood
the glasses were not broken a la Russian vodka drunkenness
though being together was our celebration

an old recital program tells me I prepared Schubert
the B-flat sonata, so I must have spent a serious hour
(or more) sometime during the day

nowhere did I note my comparisons of good music
loving company, excellent wine
the warmth of a cheery chimney
or the exhilaration of a snowy mountain range
but had I done so, there would have been no winner
January pleasures nicely balance those in June
(or September) in the French Alps

(well, you get the picture, don’t you?)

oh, yes, my Parisian camera was forgotten packing too quickly


no camera that day
[2009.24.1…a]
32 lines for the Writer’s Cramp