On Reading "Great
Gullet Creek" by Laure-Anne Bosselar
When the man takes the child
to the cabin in a winter wind
sharp
as the blades of skates, when
he ties these blades
to their shoes and sails her
across the ice,
I brace myself, expecting the
act
I've come to dread, the
moment
when he jabs through the poem
with his
calloused fingers, tears up
the white sky
like a page he doesn't want
anyone to read, the ragged
pieces floating down and
littering the frozen lake.
I'm waiting for the clumsy
fumble, the shock,
the girl crushed, stubbed out
like a cigarette.
Which doesn't come. No.
He stays in the poem below
that sheet of white sky
and offers her hot broth on
the other side.
In 1949 there was a little
girl alone
with an old man and he left
her
inviolate. There was plenty
of other heartache, even
within the small country of
the story.
But not that. Not this time.