Poetry | Alexander Lazarus Wolff

He coasts along that body of ice, 

runs the perimeter of Lake LaMonte’s silver surface,

then pirouettes, a divertissement from his life. 

Then, I see him trudging home, half-frozen, returning 

to where there is not the wind’s edge

but only stagnant air and a water stain on the ceiling.

A blossom of the core, the lightness of wind,

the swirl of snow, he knows such things

as temporary, a reprieve from the failed

marriage, the taxes that need filing, the son

who refuses to talk to him. He walks out of view, 

and I’m left with only a blank bed of ice.

 

A thread of sun refracts off that gleaming slate, 

the lake. This ice knows a placidity that I do not. 

Unencumbered by weight, resting on the water, I watch 

as smooth sheets of frost gloss it. How I wish

to know such delicacy, ice crystals sifting 

through branches. The excitement of others 

is distant: only the frost clings to my skin; 

there’s only a fraction of warmth from a ray

lancing through the fissures in the sky. My room 

thrums with silence, and the draft rustles

my curtains. I draw them closed. The day

outside streams by: the sun slants

and dims, light playing across the surface where

 

there are now only helices and trenches etched into the ice.

A stage with no actor. The particulates of frost stir 

as night rushes in a gale. Where’s the ice skater now?  

Perhaps he has gone to sleep. Perhaps he is yearning 

for that freedom he found in each leap.

He will come again tomorrow. Monotony is a cycle, 

predictable as the tick of a metronome. The clock 

knocks away seconds, each click like a thud.

In this liquid night, the year repeats its months 

and the sun boils behind the moon. Tomorrow 

will blaze on the horizon, and I’ll stare,

as he skates and time glides by. The world

is a whole reality I cannot touch.