Cold Begins

by Russ Sargent

Cold begins along the edge of the grassblade.
Remember that moment before the snow’s
sudden celebration of absence?  Or that day
sharpening our skates in the barn, the rush
of sparks in the crisp air as we gently pushed
our body’s weight into the electric whirr
of the grinding stone?  Skates made new each year
until we mysteriously become too much
to force into them.  Maybe you remember how
cold could begin like the smile of a frozen mole
in the field capturing a certain late night bliss.  Or
the duck stuck in the ice, a lost decoy, stranded
with the blue mark on its wing.  Or crawling out
on the frozen swamp, testing at first, and seeing
the underbelly of a waterbug struggling across
its hard clear sky.  Peering down out of curiosity
at skeletons of trees disappearing into darkness.
I remember Thanksgivings when the cold
would begin and we practiced our figure eights
going round and around in continuous curves.
And boxes where wood ducks nest.  Those places
we could not get to in summer, logs and stones
where the turtles perch.  I would think of summer
and horses and our total nakedness riding them
as they swam, bathing in tannin-stricken water.
High on homegrown, alive as a breeze in the trees,
defying black flies to bore another hole in our skins.
Maybe you remember how the cold begins as
those memories hit and your feet are getting
numb, wind battering the cattails, as you skate
through stands of the seasoning rock maple
which the beaver have killed.  Or how you fell down
hard.  And the spine piercing pain.  And how
different it is.  When the cold begins.  And the
child in you rises.  Slowly
gliding home across the black ice.