FIRE AND ICE
(with apologies to Robert Frost)
No, it wasn’t as big, say as carnival trucks
pulling into the fairgrounds with tents and
tilt-a-whirls to erect, but this was at the end
of cold dead December— not August— and
therefore all the more crucial when the
Riverside Texaco pick-up would first trundle out
onto the cove (on ice at last officially sanctioned “safe
enough”) and begin off-loading six-warm-months’ worth
of discarded tires and then dousing the black pyramid
with kerosene… meaning that when the sun went down,
that ol’ bonfire black-magic would draw in those
pretty-in-pink, varsity crowd, glamour girls in their new,
white Christmas-present skates (even a few with their
mittens tucked all warm-snuggly into the sleeves of
one of those white-fur muffs you never see any more
except on the old Currier and Ives Christmas cards…
and me a shabby small-fry costumed up as some
Charles Dickens’ waif in overlarge hand-me-downs…
red-and-black flannels and wools, and those black
second-hand hockey skates… yeah, me, looping round
about the flames and the beauties like some dark little
bat, imagining in my Hollywood heart: I’m some
silver-skated Hans Brinker: Look at me! Check
me out! Skating backwards over here!
Watch this!
Until the excruciating pain of frostbitten toes
cinched tourniquet-tight in socks soaked in
melting ice water over the passing hours left me
in utter defeat… to limp lamely homeward from
the arena... largely undiscovered… as always…
