Leaving tracks

Only the winged escape betrayal:
birds and angels, and the ordinary dead.
Ranging through a lover’s snowfield
few mortals pause or turn, observe

their kicked track litter the absolute
of white silence; know how deep the fall.
Even an Indian summer of trust
has its northern slope; the first footprints

last to melt. Ice soles remain:
an inverse cast of that tread
which measured virgin snow
with even strides, and strode away.