Another winter day so long ago
we five skated in the cove
where the river in its myth and mystery
turned and returned, its puzzling course
tricking my inner compass,
opening surprising country views
so near the city. We could skate close
or, easier for the teenagers, far apart.
Houses steep above suggested
some small town in Switzerland
like those under our Christmas tree,
calm in white perfection, a real village
where families shovel snow in piles off ice
for those like us
to winter-skate in smooth togetherness.
Our blades woke tiny windstorms.
We moved with speed and grace like low birds
following the frozen river’s eccentric course
beside shores of leaning pines
or under open sky with white cloud streamers
drifting in and out of otherwise perfect blue
on this day, the last or almost last
our family would choose
an outing at the same time and place.
I wrote with gigantic cursive strokes
on the brilliant white page beneath my feet,
seeing something resembling beauty everywhere,
even in the particles of cast-back cut-up ice;
a day where the lyric could live, the “I” or “we” of possibility,
when the youngest could still remain within sight,
the children’s father and I
could still skate holding hands
and winter could still freeze a river
to safely hold us all,
the ice so solid, so deep.
Published in “The Orchard Poetry Journal,” Winter, 2023