Players

 

Image from pinterest.com

 

 

Black-iron wood stove flared pungently warm
Checkerboard straddling an oak barrel rim
Players hunched upon fruit crates that creaked
Pipesmoke circled the older man’s head
Clear blue eyes in a white whiskered face
The young man kept shifting uncomfortably
Considering moves with a hesitant hand when
The door blew bang-open to wind-driven snow
And a frightening figure appeared with a rush
Fully filling the portal with storm-bundled hulk
Wet snow gusted across the sawdust-laid floor
He had panic about him and gasped for lost breath
Till his mouth gave a cry like a bear in a trap
Filling up the big room with deep guttural moans
It took a few moments to unroll his trouble
His boys had both fallen through hard millpond ice

In a single swift motion the aproned proprietor
Grabbed for his coat and vaulted the bartop
The players jumped up checkers flew through the air
They snatched coiled ropes and an oil-lamp down
From wall pegs along the shelved mercantile wall
The old man knocked the father back into the night
The young man flew by them on tall slender legs
Pumping his way through the knee-high new snow
He couldn’t make out where the breach had occurred
But heard desperate voices and thanked God for that
With a rope in his hand he moved out on the ice
Calling and crawling toward where they might be
The lantern light jounced as the rest of the party
Slogged through the dense drifts to the edge of the pond
Two immature ghosts were chased off on that night
But a bone-chill still shivers them sixty years on

Gray haired brothers now play that same barrelhead board
Keeping close by the heat of that same old black stove
Ready willing and able to jump at the sound of the door

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)