In mauve of air and indigo of shade
the boys at five o'clock hockey
—and, once in a blue moon, a girl—
put blades to ice and rove
in clean grand lines
through canopies of floodlight.
They contrive a cold flamenco
from pirouettes of hardwood, steel, bone of elbow
and, most severe of all, rapture on the face.
They dig and slash and dig
for the small, black pit that never bruises;
but in passing rink-wide, line-to-line,
they reach an end to yearning only with a goal.
Yet more bitter, more galling
is knowing that the end is momentary,
the goal no longer a goal;
and so they stand and await the face-off.
One glances at the sky:
green radiance and blue aurora borealis
dance god-like through the deepening night;
but no one breaks attention,
for they know these lights are only
reflections from the blades of their own skates.
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