Wild Ice
In this place that embraces ice,
where men augur feet–deep holes
and park trailers overnight
to sleep just above the ice’s surface,
there are those who grew up here
yet will not trespass even a small patch
of frozen lake for fear of falling through.
When I arrived I had no fear
of the frozen shortcut to campus,
although I was told there was a spring…
somewhere…
So once I was a member of this place
with a fearless family, trusting their experience
and anxious for their winter practices,
I went with joy out onto the lake to skate,
pushing off the bank with ease,
on a November day with ice but no snow,
the requisite overnights below zero,
where the ice was deep though black.
I threw off any childhood warning:
Never walk or skate on black ice.
Together, as a group of us might kayak in summer,
we pushed off the bank and applied our strokes
with confidence. I can ice skate.
Then I was scared, as one on a carnival ride,
arms stretched at my side, moaning
when the ice moaned and cracked,
at the sight of deep fissures
where shelves shifted like tectonic plates.
Yes, I know how to skate, but I had not known
wild ice, only rinks, the larger ones indoor.
Zamboni-smooth, hose-filled, cultivated ice.
To skate like this, on wild ice, I had not seen
a bird do it, any creature propel itself along
gracefully over the surface as across the sky.
The closest, again, was kayaking,
when the sky and her clouds
are perfectly reflected on calmest water
and the boat is stable and sure.
But here the ice moans and creaks,
threatening to open and swallow us up,
and here we depend on our balance on blades.
If one is good at it, this wild ice skating,
it is less like something a bird would do
and more like an angel, with an angel’s fear
that means simply awe. Not carried in a boat
but on these slivers of sharpened metal.
And me, my few times out, showing I’m human
by my simple expression of fear — of falling,
and falling through, I am not embarrassed,
no, I am thrilled to discover I am prepared
by my skating lessons and faith in the ice,
to push off and and leave the edges, to fly,
somewhere between human and angel for a time.
