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The Kids Will Forget the Cold
Meg Freer

Three acres of rippled desolation
dotted with small figures wielding shovels—
from a distance like workers in a labor camp
or scavengers on a desert planet.

To us parents it seems impossible
to clear snow off a collapsed sports dome,
much less stay upright on slippery vinyl-coated
polyester fabric with ridges of welded seams.

Wind burns cheeks at -20° Celsius and blows snow
off shovels. We feel overwhelmed and disoriented
in the vast white field, but the kids want their soccer turf,
work hard and fast, slide around as if it’s a game.

Vacuum trucks drone as they pump away
the piles we have built up, and I realize
what grownups too easily forget:
We make progress when we play.

—
Meg Freer teaches piano and writes poetry in Ontario. Her photos, short prose, and poems have appeared in various North American anthologies and journals, and she has written two chapbooks of poems. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing with Distinction from Toronto’s Humber School of Writers.

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Have you read these poems:
Sigmund Freud Slept Here by Paul Willis
Fixing the Pipes by Royal Rhodes

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