by C.C. Russell

Watching My Daughter in the Nearly Empty Skating Rink

Lights down to nightclub level,
there is a progression
of ever more depressing
pop song covers
echoing off the surface of the ice.

The ink in my pen, cold.
I’m wearing a jacket, loving this
in mid-July heat —
the pleasure of a slight shiver
as I watch her
slide and try, try so hard to stay upright.

The melodramatic tones
of my youth
quietly strum
from the speakers,
distorted – notes not quite
the same from a different
guitar, from a different time.

My past, recast —

sung by a more insistent voice,
aching
in a whole new way.

***

Over Drinks, A Translation Of Tensions

The ice that cracks
in the glass,

the shock
of whiskey introduced.

It is an explosive kind
of succumbing,

a sudden kind
of giving
in.

The ice shatters
in the glass.

We are trying
not to.

 

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels