Liar

Two wise men, a bashful Mary, and Jesus, unperturbed
   at their feet.

We walked past Marina Crescent, where two snowmen stood,
   one fallen, one
tilting; the elementary school, its windows a tablature of
   the idea of snow

and snowflakes, blind with battered paper.

I tasted white glue, the tang of dull, industrious blades.
   Saw a father teaching
his children to ski, as Frank ploughed through the drifts, he called out,

“Raise your poles and keep your feet pointed.”

The walls were lashed with ivy and puckered orange leaves;
   the fire hydrants
lining the curb were a livid, paintbox red.

The father sailed through the snow as his children stepped
   like frogs, and I
remembered

visiting my parents’ friends, who had a daughter my
   age—five or so.

Her parents trundled us into the car one morning and took
   us to a sports store
where they carefully chose and bought gear,

and I assumed I would be outfitted too, but I was not.

We drove to a clearing, and everyone stepped out and
   started to ski,
making slight, determined tracks,

and I sat in the back seat as the mother chain-smoked
   and stared into the distance.
She and I sat there for hours,

both of us resigned, still as pieces of paper, a field of new snow;
as they cut past and through us,

as we exhaled,

our breath slipping through the cracked windows like a rattle,
wedging in the hard, anchored slats.

—LYNN CROSBIE

(Originally published summer, 2004.)