A Broom's Length
/Because, if we don’t use it, you said,
when you slip and fall we’ll both go down hard.
So, to save yourself, like moon to tide
you towed me around the ice rink
with the kitchen broom extended
between us, you at the handle and me
clutching the wide straw sweeping end.
Years later, skating the canal without you
the broom you sent along became a handicap.
I ditched it in the chattering weeds
and faked a precarious balance chasing after
my cousins (all boys) up and down the frozen miles
dodging paper-sharp edges of cattail fronds,
jumping jagged holes, tripping over snake grass
clumps stranded in the ice, clumsily negotiating
the dips and bends, the time
and the distance from home.
Tonight, under pulsing green northern lights
sweeping new snow from the porch
my thumbnail, torn to the quick
from lacing hockey skates, throbs against
this old broom’s splintered handle.
Far away in this other life here in Alaska
I sit rink side watching my three sons
learn to skate on their own
because their mother—weak in the ankles
stiff in the knees—never mastered balance on blades.
Across the miles I’ve placed between us, tell me how to teach
them lessons I failed. Every day from a safe distance I watch
them falter and forget to at least slide them a broom.
Alone and outnumbered, at ninety degrees longitude
and two time zones from home, I’m still grasping at straws.
By Shelly Norris
From: United States