16 Dec Ice

An old farm house with little insulation, drips from the roof until the ice is javelins, waiting for bigger boys to spear it through the freezing air. Surely not at each other? Carefully thrust into the snow all around their newly dug fort, a sharp barricade.Ice. Brought into the house by the bucketful, hens and steers and horses that didn’t drink it, thawing in puddles behind the wood stove. A little girl dips her head and long braids to sip from the glassy pool.

Ice. Waiting for the first ice on the farm pond, with stern admonishment not to go down there without me. A perfect year, that frigid temperature drop without a snowfall or wind to make it rough. An acre of glassy smooth perfect ice, waiting for hockey and broom ball and crack the whip, bonfires that sink through, frozen hands and cracks that threaten and run across the whole pond alarmingly.