Ashes streak the glacier
bruised tracks marking thighs where
expeditions of men
went, lost their innocence
and wept, your hands wet, hair
          gripped by frigid digits

     windswept fists of distant
images, those wailing
visions lost in tundral
drifts of raven-kissed tress
memories of their paths
          ripped, split like frames from film

     archived scenes thawed by teams
of inquisitors who
see only after these
tragedies what causes
them, and in your blizzard
          things flee reason, toward

     fiction reeling, seasons
of witch-hunts fed by songs
their drummed and drilled skulls swell
to accompany, wells
of dry throats echoes crawl
          out from, true love bottomed

     by just one lung punctured
your desire’s throes fingered
to frozen knives, conquered
sighs cut by unkindness
more alive than time’s hands
          my pen driest when I

     clawed through mountainous flesh
mountains of wanting this
to thaw fountains and ink
and digress, frost breathing
on our necks as we pressed
          on and pulled down our pants

     alpine passes of shared
pasts spilled where we left off
that part of hell we called
our hearts, where explorers
forced themselves on us, those
          falls we survived only

     because ice runs before
it arrives, the feeling
of seeming so alive
watered warmth as it died
coursing through veins, its tides
          seasoned nights winter drained.