Dec. 31, 2004   by Gail Mazur  Listen (RealAudio) | How to
listen  Poem: "Ice" by Gail Mazur, from The Common. © The
University of Chicago, 1995. Reprinted with permission.   In the
warming house, children lace their skates, bending, choked, over
their thick jackets.  A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it's hard to imagine why anyone would leave  clumping across the
frozen beach to the river. December's always the same at Ware's
Cove,  the first sheer ice, black, then white and deep until the
city sends trucks of men  with wooden barriers to put up the
boys' hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,  of trying
wobbly figure-8's, an hour of distances moved backwards without
falling,  then twilight, the warming house steamy with girls
pulling on boots, their chafed legs  aching. Outside, the hockey
players keep playing, slamming the round black puck  until it's
dark, until supper. At night, a shy girl comes to the cove with
her father.  Although there isn't music, they glide arm in arm
onto the blurre