Such bravura
as the stopwatch
counts to zero
and they flex
and drop, hurtling
down the mountain
to cattle bells,
TV crews
and yodelling.
**
Sunday’s lesson
taught us risk,
to race with speed;
now Alpine snows
are late, grass
in January shows
and skiers,
once undaunted,
have retired.
Ben Keatinge won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2022 for his manuscript, ‘The Wireless Station’. He published, as editor, Making Integral: Critical Essays on Richard Murphy in 2019. His poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Cyphers, Archipelago and in anthologies, most recently, Romance Options (2022). He lives in Dublin.