Poem for the new year–“Walking on Ice”

by Linda Rodriguez

Happy 2020 to all of you!

At this time of year, many of us are dealing with snow and ice storms. We are also often reflecting on how we want to live the rest of our lives or how we want to improve our handling of important relationships. 

For the new year, then, I offer a meditation on marriage and other relationships, as well as a consideration of what can frequently be consequences of seasonal ice storms.

WALKING ON ICE

  

after a back injury is a constant

putting yourself at risk.

I know this fear well

from years of setting nerve-damaged heel

firmly on glazed cement

that may turn banana peel on me

as if in some eternal silent film gag.

For you, it’s all new—

the discovery that solid earth can shift

you from upright to supine

as soon as the water on its surface hardens.

We age by learning

such hard truths, move through life

gingerly testing our footing, or else

by smashing the brittle in our way

and sweeping the shards

from the sidewalk.

It’s not so hard, learning

to balance on the shine.

Published in Heart’s Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)

Linda Rodriguez’s 11th book, Fishy Business: The Fifth
Guppy Anthology (edited), was recently published. Dark Sister: Poems
is her 10^th book and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Plotting
the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, and The World
Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, an anthology she
co-edited, were published in 2017.  Every
Family Doubt, her fourth mystery featuring Cherokee detective, Skeet
Bannion, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in 2020.
Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every
Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of
poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart’s Migration—have received critical
recognition and awards, such as St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First
Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014,
Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award,
and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,”
published in Kansas City Noir, has
been optioned for film.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s
Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding
board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member
of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas,
Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee
Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com