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