To feel young again on a chilled winter night
skating on a frozen pond across the choppy ice
To feel young chasing a puck and slapping your stick
calling for a pass or attempting one
More than scoring a goal your goal is to remain upright
and not smack your brittle bones on ice as hard as concrete
To feel the freeze in your fingertips and the run in your nose
To hear your skate blades carving curls into the ice
and the shouts and calls for the puck
To drift away from the game and glide into a dark corner
of the pond where the ice is smoother
and to practice tight turns and backward crossovers
and stops and starts
To coax the moves from memory muscle
To so long ago
So long that youth
To have it again and with friends you haven’t seen
and the son you once taught to skate and who now schools you
outdoors in this moment on a winter night
under a black sky and nothing else
matters or possibly could
Until the morning after
when any movement
results in a grunt or groan
because of youth
gone so long
To catch that glimpse
to a moment you were young
