[Joe Crocker]

Thanks all for taking a look at this. I was curious to see how much of it would connect.

It began as a fairly straightforward effort to convey the fun I’ve had learning to ski. I was 50 when I first went with the family and my eldest was 10. So it all started rather late for me. I absolutely loved it, and have been every year since then. Sadly, my skills have never progressed much beyond poor, but I have set my sights on making it to “average” one day.

The title is my own little joke on the Beatitudes. The poem began there. It seemed natural to weave in some more holy references (skiers can get oddly evangelical), and scripture leads to inscription and that leads back to the tracks that skis carve into the piste. The wedding cake simile began as a simple observation from a ski gondola, but since skiing has been at the heart of so many happy times for me over the past 20 years in the company of family and friends, it seemed natural to extend the metaphor.

Hi David, thanks for stopping by. Yes, those are the themes. Life is one long skiing trip.

Jim. The “map as a big as a mountain” does follow on from the previous stanza, so I have taken on your suggestion and ended S5 with a colon. They do put up enormous piste maps outside the skilift stations. I also meant the stanza to imply a sense that the view of the ski trails you get from the top (esp on chair lift) themselves look like life-size maps, being pure bold white and working their way through dark woodland. And the prospect the map opens up is one of excitement and apprehension ahead of you -- right now or further along in life’s adventure.

You (& John) are very probably right that I need to lose a hunk from S7-11. They are all about the peculiar mechanics of skiing in which at one moment you are bracing against centrifugal force and the next are wholly unweighted as you move across to the next turn. I am likely to lose the reader by getting too self-absorbed by it. But thanks for appreciating the detail. It’s a matter of deciding which of the darlings is pruned away.

No need to apologise John. There may be less going on it than you think. Much of it is about learning to master and embrace an extended fall and to turn into something graceful (or in my case something survivable). So its less “one damn thing after another” than the same thing said slightly different ways. At the end the narrator and companion are carried off to the next adventure by a ski chair lift which always strikes me as a sort of fairground ride, so why not a ferris wheel?

Thank you for the thumbs up Annie. I also think I can read it out loud in a way that sounds better than it looks on the page.

And (Carl), unless I’m sticking strictly to a well known form I’m never quite sure whether it should go in metrical or non-met. Eg Unless I’m trying to write a limerick then my natural default is iambic, and there are usually rhymes and alliteration. The line lengths tend to vary and when posted in metrical they sometimes attract questions. I’ll happily go where I’m told.

S2 adopts the metaphor taken from the title, implying skiers (believers) on the piste below the lift are part of some strange sect performing odd manoeuvres on the snow and repeating them over and over for the greater glory of whomever. And the “practising their lines” does indeed have the connotation of going over your wedding vows, as well writing your own signature on the already written piste.

Thanks for spotting the typos, now corrected.

I guess the yoyo is an unlikely metaphor. (Skiers rarely head back uphill!) but there is a sense of repeated tension and rebound.

Piste-makers. More typically called piste bashers or groomers in UK circles. But the sense of piste making as diligent human endeavour is also there. And I hoped the quiet ending might be an echo of the actual beatitude “Blessed are the peace makers.”

Thanks again

Joe

[Jim Moonan]

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Originally Posted by Joe Crocker

Jim. The “map as a big as a mountain” does follow on from the previous stanza, so I have taken on your suggestion and ended S5 with a colon. They do put up enormous piste maps outside the skilift stations. I also meant the stanza to imply a sense that the view of the ski trails you get from the top (esp on chair lift) themselves look like life-size maps, being pure bold white and working their way through dark woodland. And the prospect the map opens up is one of excitement and apprehension ahead of you -- right now or further along in life’s adventure.

Piste-makers. More typically called piste bashers or groomers in UK circles. But the sense of piste making as diligent human endeavour is also there. And I hoped the quiet ending might be an echo of the actual beatitude “Blessed are the peace makers.”

The map is where I think the poem resides (though you make no specific mention of marriage in the comment)

The question is: who are the piste-makers in the metaphor?

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[Joe Crocker]

Hi Jim,

Yes the map is key. It opens up the future and spreads out the places you might go and what could happen on the way..

Marriage isn’t explicitly mentioned but there is a wedding cake, a bed and confetti. And kids do turn up and disappear again.

The piste-makers might be thought of as the heavy lifters, those pioneers that went before us, and those who keep it (ski resorts, society, life) all working and to whom we should be grateful.

But the poem is mainly about skiing!

I realise I haven’t done much with it in response to comments. I had hoped to shorten it and maybe clarify. I think I am least satisfied with S9, the one with the “Lean out, look straight, and make your fate your own” which sounds uncomfortably close to Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for life”. Hmm. I did try deleting some bits, but I don’t think I have made it any better yet. So, I may stop torturing it and just let it rest for now.

Cheers

Joe

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Joe Crocker

Marriage isn’t explicitly mentioned but there is a wedding cake, a bed and confetti.

… and “a question asked” and a “quiet promise.”

[David Callin]

The title explained itself to me at once. I think it's better than the one Monty Python came up with for Life of Brian.

You don't really need any more comment from me - you've had some great ones from other people - and I can't follow you into the intricacies of the skiing terms, but I think it's a great conceit which you seem to have kept up all the way through.

I'm not sure why we haven't been again since our first trip. There seemed to be an awful lot of palaver about the preparations etc. Maybe that was it. We did enjoy it, though, that one time. In Finland, so it was beautiful. I had (then) quite a good sense of balance, so I pretty much learned to ski on day 1 but didn't learn how to stop on day 3. Day 2 was really interesting. I ended up in the car park more than once. (Bounced off quite a nice BMW on one of those occasions.) Then there was the time I mistimed my smooth move from slope to ski-lift and was knocked to the ground by the next empty seat ...

Anyway, good poem. It works well.

Cheers

David