Elegance

Elegance...oh to be elegant. Sophisticated, smooth, graceful. Oh to be graceful. I can only imagine what it must be like to drift across the ice, seemingly without effort, gently. Oh so gently as if on air. Yes...tall and willowy, the skater delicately glides across the rink. All eyes are on this lissome creature who, with style and ease, becomes one with the ice.

Uh huh, that would be pretty spiffy. Then the music stops, the lights come up and reality sets in. I doubt that anyone ever described me as tall and willowy. Stocky and clumsy maybe. Delicately gliding across ice? More like awkwardly skidding and then tumbling on to my ample fanny where I sit, freezing my, well, freezing my well padded dignity off.

Still, there in the dark for a couple of hours, it isn't difficult to imagine...

...Not seldom from the uproar I retired Into a silent bay, or sportively

Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng, To cut across the shadow of a star

That gleamed upon the ice. And often times When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either sideCame sweeping through the darkness, spinning still

The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short --- yet still the solitary cliffs

Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled

With visible motion her diurnal round.

Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,

Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched

Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

~William Woodsworth