The Skating Rink
© John Tabah

When my sisters and I were very young,
our father made our first skating rink.
Every day in the winter’s cold,
he would stand outside with a watering hose.

My father, a child at heart,
bought hockey sticks and a puck.
He wanted us to play games of hockey
with our neighborhood friends.

Using a broom and a chair, he taught my sisters
how to skate in their red flannel-lined figure skates.
He dutifully shoveled the snow that fell each night
so that we could skate on the hidden ice beneath.

We would skate on that rink for hours each day,
and in the evening lay on the ice to wait for the first stars to appear.
Fearful that we might fall asleep and freeze, our mother
would quickly call us indoors at the first twinkling of night.

Inventing games to play on the ice, we cherished
the skating rinks built through the years.
As the winter’s days became warmer, layers of water stood,
turning the ice on the rink into slush.

When the days became longer,
our days of skating would grow shorter,
as more water than ice would sit on our skating rink.
But wait, we knew marble season was just around the corner
so we gladly would say good-bye to our winter’s skating rink!