Sylvie Tarn · Skier & Poet

Poems written uphill, revised by weather.

Backcountry poems about snow, breath, grief, and the ledger of small decisions — carried out of the Wallowas one skin track at a time.

Read the poems ↓

Skier at dusk with skis on her pack, facing pink alpenglow over snowy peaks

Alpenglow commute · Wallowas

Selected poems · use the skis

Skin Track

Wallowas · first light

Before the lifts wake,
the mountain practices silence
and I practice listening.
One foot. Then the wanting of the next.
The snow keeps a ledger of small decisions —
mine, the wind's, the water's
from some warmer life.
At the ridge I unclip my heels
like a promise I made to gravity
and mean, this time, to keep.

Field Notes, January

−11° · alone, but expected home

Cold enough that breath turns visible —
proof I am a thing that continues.
The aspens hold their applause.
Somewhere under all this white
a creek keeps talking to itself,
low, like a woman who knows the answer
and is waiting, patiently,
to be asked.

Poem for the Man at the Trailhead Who Asked If I Knew Where I Was Going

Parking lot · 5:40 a.m.

Yes.
I have studied this range like scripture,
but thank you.
I carry map, beacon, shovel, probe,
two liters of water, a headlamp,
and the memory of every man who asked.
The summit and I have an understanding.
You were not part of it.

Runout

March · every March

The report said wind slab,
said convex roll, said buried,
and said nothing
about how you laughed
with your whole altitude.
I ski the trees now, mostly.
Some days the mountain is a church.
Some days it is only weather.
I have loved you in both.

— for M., 1989–2016

Corn Season

April · south faces

By April the mountain forgives us.
The snow says yes softly, all afternoon,
and gives our weight back sweetened.
We ski it slow.
We let the season end the way
you set down something you have carried
a long way —
carefully, and looking at it once more.

1 / 5

A lone skier crossing a vast snow slope beneath a shadowed mountain wall

The office · one set of tracks

About

Sylvie Tarn writes uphill. She lives at the end of a plowed road in the Wallowas, where the winter is long enough to finish her sentences.

She is at work on her first collection, Ledger of Small Decisions. The poems here appeared first in her field notebooks, and thawed later. Others have found homes in Alpinist, Camas, and the Whitefish Review.

Skier carving down toward a still fjord ringed by white peaks

Corn season, somewhere north

Contact

For readings, reprints, or to tell her about your snowpack:
sylvie@sylvietarn.pages.dev