In old films the ice looks grey,
you half expect a trampling of cows at the edge,
an arc of grain the cutter missed as it turned.
The camera seems left on accidentally,
awaiting the teams coming onto the ice. A chair scrapes.
“Are we on yet?” someone asks, the voice unhurried, unrattled
by any heresy of unused air. The crowd arriving in hats
and ties. The gleam of newly flooded ice. The graceful stride
of the only man on the ice. As large as Storey is, there’s ice enough
and time to think before he turns to drop the puck
and start the game.
Snow in the street lights after,
heading home. The beckoning lights of familiar bars.
God how he loves this city. Idling at a red on Sherbrooke Street,
his mind swings back to that puzzling talk with Terry,
then his turning abruptly away towards his goal.
One set of lights, and he’d be home on Beaconsfield
with his wife and the kettle on in the kitchen.
And why would you fret about Sawchuk
anyway? Jumping Jesus, what the guy could do.
He’d felt the agony in the Forum tonight, the agitated
crowd, and Irvin back and forth like a dog behind the Montreal
bench, throwing up his hands, bending in anger to one of his players
as Terry turned them back wave after wave in the terrible storm
of the crowd—48 shots against 12, the Rocket in twice,
but the Wings take the game 3 to 1.
And Storey, as he did so often when he drove,
talking away in his head with his wife.
Would he mention it once he was home, he wondered,
with a mug of tea to warm his hands? Maybe yes, maybe no.
There wasn’t much rhyme nor reason to what you did or didn’t
say to wives. And when you had your well-handled game,
much order or sense to anything else.