Skater

Here is a little something to take our minds off of the present times. Forget the heat and the humidity and all those other things weighing us down. Soak up a little cool air and enjoy the ability some people have of superbly putting words together to take us to other places!

The Skater

by Ted Kooser

 

 

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.

 

 

from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press