Poetz.com: Poetry Changes People

THE SKATE

I try hard to picture you as a girl,

though I have no reason to believe

I would ever have spoken to you

as you glided by on those frozen creeks,

hockey rinks of boys’ dreams.

Decades later,

I crashed into you, a woman

with a sway, confident

even on the rusted blades you hadn’t

worn since those icy, undefined days.

I note tonight how you skate over

any words that pass near

the mark, cautious to avoid any

tangle of thoughts on this

still isolated lake,

the setting we chose for this

evening’s childhood

reunion.

Perry S. Nicholas is a practicing poet and English instructor at Erie Community College North. He teaches remedial writing, literature, and creative writing. He is a co-host of the Screening Room, carrying on the tradition set by Rosemary Kothe. His partner is performance poet Verneice Turner. He was featured reader at the Center for Inquiry and the Botanical Gardens in 2005, and he has read recently at Just Buffalo, Rust Belt Books, EmT Coffee, and Urban Epiphany. He has been published on three occasions in 2004-2005 in the Buffalo News. He has also been published in the local magazines After 50, What’s Up, Images, and recently there was an article written on his work in Metro Source. Finally, five of his poems were published in Ya’Sou Magazine in Columbus, Ohio. He attended the prestigious NYS Writer’s Conference at Skidmore College in July 2005, where he had the opportunity to work with poet Henri Cole.