ottawater12

ottawater: 12 - 14
Fair
I’d run into him about once a year,
usually at the fall fair, him with his children,
me with mine. And against the backdrop
of Ferris wheels and champion pigs
I’d be energetic, interested in his work, and his family
(questions are clever, I was learning, how they
both hook and repel).
Sometimes we’d trade news about the others –
who had split up, who had launched a business.
Then, a tidy good to see you,
and I would turn, let out my breath.
But one year, he broke through the calculated mist
to say, I’m sorry.
Perhaps his marriage, to a woman far more
austere than I had ever been, had called on him to
face his ghosts.
Well, it was a long time ago, I answered.
And that was my final whistle in the dark.
The next time I saw him, by the tractors, say,
and the next year, trying the blacksmith’s hammer, maybe,
I didn’t see him.
The pros arrive
Able as deer,
and human by the counterfeit green
of resort jackets, the mountain’s name
stitched high on the sleeve, someone else’s tattoo,
removable, never mind.
Genuinely guileless smiles, teeth
like snowcaps, skin burnished by speed.
I’ve heard that their goggles
disarray sunlight.
They swoop in at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.,
and raise those goggles, revealing pale
hourglasses, heroes’ masks.
They lean toward our children:
Well, Bud, where do you want to go? they ask.
And as we blink into the high-pitched light
they lead our sons and daughters
to a chairlift, celestial high-chair,
toward a peak lost in sleet.
We turn away, trusting the pros
who have not yet been blinded by love.