The first time I skated on a pond
I was betrayed;
ice once smooth as an inner thigh,
white as the sound of silence
no longer existed.
Ripples and water things
stuck in a death knell
as if Odin, king of northern skies
in a rush of exhalations
blew out frozen anger,
turned a pond
once green and soft
with fish and bulrush
into a shadow of itself
and I was not welcomed.
I was my sharpened blades
tremulous, baffled, unsure
fearful of the uneven, unknown
gray-white ice not pristine,
not familiar with music
or wooden benches
or snack stands
of hot dogs and pizza—
no skating crowds
laughing, pirouetting
falling, getting up again.
Here a handful of people and me
in my toe-ridged fancy skates
and the dead fish
who looked up through the ice
wide eyed,
mouth opened in wonder.

Decades later I remembered that fish,
that look when death glides in
on spectral blades
to a bedside with sheets
white as ice.

At the periphery of my garden
I watch the stripling tree
bend almost double
as if to taste the earth with its leaves.

Today the March wind carries the sharpness
of angry words in its voice,
whips the air with a cat-o-nine tails
burred and blind,

strikes out as a small child
furious with shame,
would vehemently deny
a minor sin caught by the good son.

The tree like a supplicant
asking pardon from a priest
reaches out only to be
chastised, slapped backwards.

Unsteady as it stands,
feels its roots grasp hard;
its place at the edge of the walk,
tenuous.

Then without signal the battle is over.
Spent like a worn-out tantrum,
the wind exhausted
goes to ground, sleeps.

the tree, too young, too naïve
to know better, thinks it has won.