Cow Pond Summer’s cesspool transformed into an oblong ice rink on the limestone sculpted landscape across the farmer’s field from our house. We’d take the surface as we found it always hope for no snow, for smoothness, but cracked or bumpy me and the boys in a one mile radius played hockey for hours after shoveling it clear to its dark nuances. I sat on my butt to don my figure skates and already the damp cold soaked through my clothes. The meager heat of that distant sun no match for the Ontario wind chill. The frozen puck against my snow pants, thin protection as I stickhandled like Sittler, in my glory to the goalposts of frozen boots. The youngest kid was decreed goalie, usually my little brother, who hated hockey. I took slap shots at his tuque-clad head until my arms ached then I let him skate, but I soon longed for the screech and scrape of my blades, and there are no referees meting out justice So he was promptly back in net. I’m always the last one, begging for the boys to stay. Didn’t even ask the other girls, long gone to play with dolls as dusk descends and our mother calls us in. Our silent pact to score just one more goal until she threatens to get my father, I, with my arms up in victory anyway. Smell of sweaty hockey gloves that the fortunate boys wore accompanies us on that 15 minute walk home. Me lingering while my brother gunned for the front door. We never know the last goal we score, the last game we play. The pond hasn’t frozen over in years, a thin film of ice sometimes threatens, but thaws on those frequent slushy days And the kids go to the arena to play, segregated by sex and age, on an artificial ice rink. The cow pond is still there, Though unimaginably small The farm still exists on the difficult land the rock quarry, the grazing grass for heifers And Farmer Hunt, if he’s alive, is an old man now.