After Christmas dinner

After Christmas dinner, three generations of Our regathered family strap on long skis and stride, Single file, along an ancestral tote road, Cleared a hundred years ago for dragging giant timber. The falling snow furls so thickly that Anyone can only see the skier closest to him; The other snow-blurred shapes are simply family. Thus warmed by the fires of indistinct and easy kinship, We slide along on ten inches of sure base, Kick up elegant, light powder. Since Christmas Eve, when the snow began, We've all become adepts. No one falls. Each maneuver is an expert turn. No child complains of the cold. Only the leafless maples creak in the winter wind. We are, this Christmas Day, creating a memory of Perfect Conditions, of complete amity, Of love that slides from one to another With an ease we will struggle to recover in all the Christmases to come.