SKATER POEM

For Poetry Friday, allow me to share with you a poem that has been with me all week. Have you ever had a moment like the one in the poem?

For other great poetry, roundup is at Wild Rose Reader.

Skater

She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail
that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves
that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,
as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen
top of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,
she began to braid a loose path that broadened
into a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swooped
and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs
and leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves
lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn
there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,
skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back
at the woman she'd been just an instant before.


- Ted Kooser
from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend, WA 2004