The lake is thawing in slabs on the shore.
March, and we’ve come here on a whim to see
what it’s like in an opposite season.
No one here, the playground like a widow,
the restrooms locked tight, but water and sky
are one blue, in counterpoint shades.
It’s a hard shine on this small flat of muck,
after months of loss after loss, turn
upon turn, when we have not often
“been ourselves,” none of us. Like others, this
is slow to change, its temperature steadier
than air’s, and like others, this ices over
from perimeter to center. Our edges,
fragile in the days, also froze first.
I am not one for displays, but I am
one for “To hell with it.” One of me
takes a palm-sized chunk and sidearms it east,
quick-spinning fragment sliding along span.
Another me does the same, another,
another, our motions like chants: stoop, rise,
sling. The thinnest ones shatter before going
far, but they are transparent layers
on top of a vast opacity,
and there might be a lesson in that.
When I move to the big slabs, I feel them
in my gut when I throw. They stay solid
when they fall, wider revolutions,
accelerating upon impact (and we
smile at all that) out to the center which will
stay frozen longer, more deeply, floating
on itself. It’ll take a little more time
than here, as we keep throwing. It just takes time.
Andy Fogle is the author of Across from Now, and six chapbooks of poetry. Other poems, co-translations, and a variety of nonfiction have appeared in Blackbird, Best New Poets 2018, Gargoyle, Image, Parks and Points, and elsewhere. He was born in Norfolk, grew up in Virginia Beach, and lived for 11 years in the DC area and now lives in upstate NY, teaching high school.
