Cynthia Zarin

Skating in Harlem, Christmas Day
>
> To Mary Jo Salter
>
>
> Beyond the ice-bound stones and bucking trees,
> past bewildered Mary, the Meer in snow,
> two skating rinks and two black crooked paths
>
> are a battered pair of reading glasses
> scratched by the skater's multiplying math.
> Beset, I play this game of tic-tac-toe.
>
> Divide, subtract. Who can tell if love surpasses?
> Two naughts we've learned make one astonished 0--
> a hectic night of goats and compasses.
>
> Folly tells the truth by what it's not--
> one X equals a fall I'd not forgo.
> Are ice and fire the integers we've got?
>
> Skating backwards tells another story--
> the risky star above the freezing town,
> a way to walk on water and not drown.
--------------------------------------------
>
> Cynthia Zarin teaches at The Graduate School
of Journalism at Columbia
> University and has published the following
books: The Watercourse, Fire
> Lyric, The Swordfish Tooth.
>