Couple of beers with the boys after practice,
the kid in his purring and sleek machine. Up the ramp
and into the traffic. The lights are quick but not as quick
as him. He’s ten miles out of town before he lets
it in, what happened there
out on the ice,
what weighs on him, the pass up the middle with practice
all but done, one man to beat and knowing who it had
to be—Doug Harvey, the boyhood hero,
who liked to get dressed when he wasn’t hungover
or watch from the blues by himself
when he was.
And he was on the ice tonight.
“Sonofabitch. He does move good for an old guy,”
someone said earlier, wiping his bloody nose with a towel,
everybody laughing on the bench.
So here it was, too late to turn away.
Hey Hey, says one of the guys and points with his chin.
They turn at the bench to watch as Harvey glides over to gather
him in, the two of them moving up the ice together, each waiting
for the other guy to flinch. Harvey grins. The kid says later,
that’s when he hears the voice in his head you always
go to your left and then, seeing who he is, if you know that
he knows that. All in a wink, you don’t even think
and it’s done, a tip of the cap to the left
and step to the right into open ice,
bright as a crater,
wide as a leap from a bridge.
So why the gloom as he reaches home?
He shuts down the engine and sits in the dark.
The moon lights up the Jack pine on the ridge. Another age
and he’d have been happy riding fence. Clopping along, creaking
sound in the dark, that same damn cow pushing up against the fence.
Turn in the saddle to see. Clap of thunder. Pulse of a powerful
heart beneath his own. Touch the agreeable horse
with a heel and head for home.
No one for miles around to see, he climbs out
for a leak. That moment in the dressing room he won’t
forget—unwrapping an ankle, he sees the ancient skates that stop
at him. The talk in the room dies down. His eyes move up
the legs (something all wrong about them in yellow
and green), warily he glances up
at the weathered face.
“Hey,” says the gravelly voice. “You always
go to your left—what the fuck were you doing out there?”