On frigid January nights we’d
take my ’48 Plymouth onto
the local reservoir, lights off
to dodge the cops, take turns

holding long manila lines in pairs
behind the car, cutting colossal
loops and swoons across
the crackly range of ice. Oh

god did we have fun! At ridges
and fissures we careened,
tumbled onto each other, the girls
yelping, splayed out on all fours,

and sometimes we heard groans
deep along the fracture lines as
we spun off in twos, to paw, clumsy,
under parkas, never thinking of

love’s falls nor how thin ice
would ease us into certain death.
No, death was never on our minds,
we were eighteen, caterwauling

under our own moon that
warded off the cops and
front-page stories of six kids
slipping under the fickle surface.

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Thomas R. Moore’s poems have appeared in Worcester Review, College English, Bangor Metro, Wife of Bath, Boston Literary Magazine, and Wolf Moon Journal. He has poems forthcoming in Flint Hills Review and The Café Review. He lives in Brooksville, Maine.