Collected Poems 14
Indiana Winter
A thermometer would let us know
When the sheet of ice on the lake
Could hold our gliding weight.
In early November
Our pace would slow to shuffling
Along the corridor between classes and stop
At a frosted pane
To squint out at a thin column of red
On a narrow wooden frame between numbers,
Then pass on, pestering in the Indiana cold,
Four weeks early.
When in the corridor between classes
our pace would slow to a stop
at a frosted pane
to squint at a thin column or red