Sunday Morning Poetry

Skater

She was all in black but for a yellow ponytail

that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves

that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,

as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen

top of the world. And there, with the clatter of blades,

she began to braid a loose path that broadened

and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs

and leapt in the the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves

lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn

there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,

skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back

at the woman she'd been just an instant before.

~ Ted Kooser