#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
My parents wanted all of us to skate
found rinks, placed out of doors, near woods
where meadow grasses dried wildflowers would
crumple, you tramped daily, checked edges
trusting January ponds would glass over, thicken
to thick enough, after Christmas presents
each had a pair, handed down, new size by old
for sons, hockey, figure skates for daughters, down
the long dirt driveway to the dairy next door across their
meadow, the snow-less slope we'd race down to find the flawless
swamp ice glazed for us, unscratched, it was ours alone
to ruin that first morning, my mother, her un-mittened fingers
wrenching off our rubber boots, pushing so many socked feet
into frigid skates, her fingers stinging as if we'd bitten them, she
kept lacing, lacing, swore a little, under our wool socks, snow suits
her hand-knit mittens was so much frost needled aching we whined
and stumbled, shouted, our legs clumsy grew weak with cold, it only got
chillier, chillier, pretty soon we couldn't feel any part of our over-heated
bodies, it was all a kind of giddy, weightless winging
into dusk
All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar 2016