Lake Skating

The red flags mark where not to swim,

but do they apply if I only plan to skate?

Perhaps I am just looking for an excuse to drown.

Like a warm knife in butter,

I glide sweetly on the surface.

I slip

but remain careful not to puncture

the frozen barrier.

How simple it is to toe-loop jump across

this thin ice, stretched over a churning sea,

The dark lake always in motion.

Some attempt ice fishing,

so I must shoo them away.

If we stay only at the surface,

then there will never be fish.

I can not look at the ice

or else I would see them swimming.

The fishermen pack up their things.

Soon the bunny hop and salchow are not enough,

I rapidly learn the flip and lutz.

Pretend not to notice how the toe pick bleeds.

The beads, running across the ice, are

held together by immense surface tension.

It’s a triple axel when

He tells me he would love to lock me in a storage container.

Since when has it been unsafe to skate on pond ice?

If climate change is not real, I have nothing to worry over.

I do not prepare for the thaw.

•

I fear that I will die in the spring .

When I do not bloom

with the rest of the temperate north ,

when I am not

the temperate north at all .

I fear that I will die in the spring ,

when I am an arctic storm

on their summer’s day.

I fear that I will die in the spring ,

natural and inevitable .

That will be my time.

•

Spring and summer pass.

Waves lap at a sunlit shore.

The ice, a bittersweet memory.

•

I always thought I would die in the spring,

but here I am

sitting in green grass

as the wind blows ,

as the birds chirp ,

and squirrels run across my feet .

And maybe I did die in the spring.

A child sits next to me

and blows bubbles .

“Why don’t we just sit

And try to enjoy the view, son.”