Skating

skating farther in is skating farther out

I don't know how I ever doubted it

skating farther out is skating farther in

since I can't skate anyway

but only in my mind I can pretend

where the light dazzles

the ice on the ponds

and I am caught in Currier and Ives

with a green tinted muff

because it's December

and crows etched in the near snow in the clouds

I know somehow

it is a familiar landscape

I read early in a novel about Hans Brinker.

his skates of silver.

I will have skates of gold in another chapter..

and pirouette at sunset on a frozen lake

so that the torches of the sun might burn

in deep rose and vermillion Amy Lowell.

your opal images.

it's winter and my favorite prisms glow.

the sweet old forgotten poems, their legends, true.

I have not forgotten you.

and they are in my heart forever

near the pines laden with snow

and this is for John Greenleaf Whittier too.

For snowboundedness and the brittle air the sense of

home I keep looking for, where is it? under the Tree?

under the festooned tree..imagine with me that

I am in love with poetry;with the immortals.

I want to skate out in my skittery poems on the lake of Time

and breathe and breathe the snow cold air

braiding rubies in my hair.

mary angela douglas 2 july 2020