Moulin

By Danielle Desruisseaux

Boy, seventeen, up on Matanuska Glacier

walks from his tent and disappears.

His footprints end

there is just the moulin

vertical shaft plunging deep into ice.

 

They search for him,

hanging ropes and lights a full

250 feet into the abyss.

They find no sign of the bottom.

They find no sign of the boy.

 

The boy fell into the ice

fell into blue and blackness

Did he catch a hand on the side of the hole,

causing a crazy

cartwheeling

descent

Or did he fall facing upwards, watching

the slice of bright Arctic sky diminish

over his head?

 

Did an edge give way,

throw him off balance,

did he fall heavily

hitting tail bone and head

and plummet, half-aware?

 

Or was it one clean step

into nothingness

crunch-crunch of crampons

on ice and then nothing

but gravity and cold air

forward free-fall

jacket flapping, into the void?

Did he think

This can’t be happening?

 

But maybe falling is like floating

at terminal velocity

the immensity of the ice

absorbing the sky’s light

manifesting a blue

he could never imagine

until viewed from below,

from the black

 

Maybe, on that descent,

the boy knew his death

as more than ordinary.

 

Perhaps he thought,

as he fell,

I am chosen.

 

And perhaps,

as he fell,

he was.