Superior to the philosopher of God’s absence,
the avalanche is patient above those pines
it might sublimely clean its teeth with.
At the lip of the highest peak snow accumulates
on a dead man’s moustache like a dead man’s moustache.
Repetition isn’t funny to the dead man who never
made it to that bar in Champagne for champagne
or to the avalanche whose time has almost come.
We might consider how scale means to climb
or to remove the scales from a dead creature
with this precious, precise violence we call a knife.
A philosopher needs a sharp knife to cut the cord
of pride hanging her like a Christmas ornament
from her parachute caught in the trees of the supernatural.
After all, God is present as that last snowflake settling
on the lip, the tickle which has come a long way
to now. From afar it looks so soft. Even the knife.