In the Ötztal Alps


you think you will go on forever
up and up that precipice, one foot

in front of the other, until that day
you are stopped, maybe you wake up

with a stiff back, or maybe that knee
that has bent so many times, refuses,

maybe a glitch in the brain, glob in the groin,
hitch in the heart, maybe someone

shoots you in the shoulder with a flint arrow
and you sink into the snow that has begun to fall,

and your pursuer for reasons you cannot explain
does not rush you and take the wonderful stuff

you carry, the copper ax with its ash handle,
the arrows with their viburnum and dogwood shafts,

your flint-bladed knife, your little bag of meds
with those bits of Piptoporus betulinus for parasitic worms,

yes, your little book of poems.
You think as you lose consciousness

that your children won’t want your treasures,
all those odd things you endowed with breath.

You know they won’t preserve your body at 37 degrees—
no, you are no Ötzi, and today you are relieved

that generations hence no one
will peer at you torqued on a cold table

and wonder who you were
or what you were trying to do.

Lois Harrod