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Remember the night
the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker
rowed the moon boat over the mountains
and we watched from a treeless knob below Purple Pass
and stayed up all night, so so cold,
single digits at least
and shared a trash bag bivvy
industrial strength,
swiped from the compactor
and shivered tooth rattle hard
me in my ragg wool sweater
you with actual down
and the lake sparkled below, a silver fish
shiny-scaled, flipping its gills
down in the dark where red antennas
grace gneiss walls, outsized
and ancient-strange. The others had left us
for quitters. So we stabbed our skis
in ice like a moon-glinted cage—
so we wouldn't slide off
the mountain. We read aloud
to each other from a borrowed
book stories of other mountain
people, able neighbors from
a gentle north. We watched
the moon crest mountains
like waves—Castle, Devore, Tupshin, Bonanza.
Never sinking low nor shooting high
balanced thin and teetery, bright marvel
like those old telemark
boots we found used—and who knew?—they fit.
It must be aliens, we decided
and wriggled from the bag to hop
and holler. Take us! we cried. Take us!
On cold nights afterwards—for years—we'd ask one other: what if
that night we'd leapt aboard? Then at some point,
we knew. We did.