In our first poem of the new year, Thomas Moore of Brooksville looks back on the risks he and his friends once took as they glided over the ice holding ropes behind a Plymouth in the dark. Note how Moore imitates the dangers he describes with long sentences that turn sharply at line breaks and leap across stanzas.

The Plymouth On Ice

By Thomas R. Moore

On frigid January nights we’d

take my ‘forty-eight Plymouth onto

the local reservoir, lights off

to dodge the cops, take turns

holding long manila lines in pairs

behind the car, cutting colossal

loops and swoons across

the crackly range of ice. Oh

God, did we have fun! At ridges

and fissures we careened,

tumbled onto each other, the girls

yelping, splayed out on all fours,

and sometimes we heard groans

deep along the fracture lines as

we spun off in twos, to paw, clumsy,

under parkas, never thinking of

love’s falls or how thin ice

would ease us into certain death.

No, death was never on our minds,

we were eighteen, caterwauling

under our own moon that

warded off cops and

front-page stories of six kids

slipping under the fickle surface.

 

Copy the Story Link