Cross country skiing with my mother and sister
took me down wooded paths
I knew from the humid
summer, long stretches beside the river
somnolent and half-frozen, through gardens
of ice like glass sculptures.
We breathed through our scarves,
the air smelling of damp wool.
Sometimes I found a small hill
and took it again and again. Once we got lost,
turned around in the big park, and as dusk
came on we watched deer
like ghosts pass us on
both sides, silent, and moving fast without
looking like they were making
any effort. I was eleven, my sister eighteen,
my mother that indeterminate age
kids always assign to parents.
We stopped, breathed. We were not
afraid. We had only just moved
to town; what we still thought of
as our home had been a farm,
with plenty of winter nights outside
in the snowy dark. My mother
hesitated, unsure. My sister had little
sense of direction. I looked around
at the snow-quiet woods, the orange
of the Illinois sunset, the soothing
lack of human signs. I knew what
we were trying to get back to.
“This way,” I said.