Green Lake

You can hear a frozen lake before you see it

Small town news traveling as fast as

The rocks slipping across the water's 

Shiny new surface on the first day of the year

"Have you walked on frozen water?" I ask,

Thinking about the morning two years ago

When I walked halfway around Lake Placid

Watching a team of sled dogs

Pulling their soft, salt taffy children cargo

Like something out of a movie

And decided that I, too, would split the distance

Right down the middle

The locals told me it was safe

This lake in front of me

Has held my summer body

If I stepped down off the dock

It might hold my winter body, too,

This yellow coat and these leather boots

Lakes always surprise you when they freeze over

One way or another