Perfect Ice   

Weather conditions were perfect
and word spread rapidly to those in the know:
skating tonight on Billows Slough.

After supper,
with skates laced together
and slung over shoulders,
we left home,
telling parents we would be
at the hockey rink

So they wouldn't worry
about us plunging through the ice
to certain death.
Anyway, we knew the water
was only three feet deep
and getting frozen stiff
was the worst that could happen.

On our way,
we passed the hockey rink,
brightest spot in town,
where we could hear
the scrape of blades,
the slap of hockey sticks on ice,
the whack of a bullet puck
into the corner boards,
and the clang when it hit a goal post.

Under the black of night
past the edge of town,
under a thousand stars
spilled from the Big Dipper,
our little procession
trudged in four-buckle overshoes
through snow and stubble
to the perfect ice of Billows Slough,

Pulling woolen socks from cold skates
we laced up quickly,
before the skates could get any colder
and each of us tried to be first on the ice.

Smooth like a sheet of glass
and not much thicker,
its flawless surface was unmarked
by scrapes and pits like the hockey rink.

We skated this perfect sheet
unbounded by rink boards,
played crack the whip
where no skates had been before,
and if we fell,
we slid on our backs
with arms and legs held up
like overturned insects
gliding frictionless to the edge of the ice.

Farther out, on thin ice
cracks in the surface snapped at our heels,
chasing us with zig-zag tracks
in the moonlight back to safety,
and as my skates inscribed the perfect ice
in abstract lines,
they etched memories in my heart
that Spring would never melt.
 

© 2006 John J. Chalmers