Poetry by Christine Andersen
When the pond froze over
my father and I went out
with our skates and hockey sticks
slung over our shoulders,
trudged through the snow
to the log where we laced up.
He swept the ice clean,
gliding behind a broom
in the brisk air
with the grace of a floating swan.
We spun circles
end to end,
sliced the ice
with newly sharpened blades
in flurries of low, white storms
deking,
zigzagging the puck—
a deft strike
then another
and another—
wooden sticks clacking
against the whir of our blades—
the puck— a lightning bolt
across the glittered surface—
I yelled,
I got this!
Watch out!
SCORE!
Score
score
echoed off the ice
like rumbling thunder
through the winter woods,
where 40 years after,
when I walk by the pond,
it echoes still.
Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist who hikes the Connecticut woods daily, pen and pad in pocket. The outdoors inspires many of her poems. Publications include Comstock, Octillo, Awakenings and Evening Street Reviews, Dash, Slab and Glimpse, among others. She won the 2023 American Writers Review Poetry Contest. Read her poem Wild from The Bluebird Word’s October Issue.
