The ice was always cracking

                        towards shore.

In its low thundering mist

we felt our own slick 
                        treacheries accumulating. We skated ‘til dark,

dodging in and out

                        of the groaning

weather, shivering forward 
like a train shuttering forever towards the horizon. 
And only for a moment did we hope

for the ice below us to peel back, for

the surface to rearrange itself beneath us. 
                        Then — we were falling, glamorously

into a black — splash of water. 
                        We couldn’t wait to be famous,

or simply to leave, 
                        to look back

upon it — our miniature landscape,
a diorama of who we’d once been,

where we’d placed our cold

red hands and

let out

                        our hot and hopeful breath. 

    Kim Kent is our poet in Residence for October.


    Previously: See you Later, Grapefruit, Just for Tonight, Walking Home in Rain, Waiting, and Luck, a Birthday Poem.