Imagine a pond, frozen over after a month of temperatures 
below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. A man slides over its bumpy surface. 
He reads an invitation from a friend to move to a country 
where it is always summer, but he has refused again and again. 
It’s not that he likes the cold, though he owns a warm coat 
and six sweaters, two green, two blue, one red, one gray, 
that he rotates through the week, always coming up one day short.
Where he lives, it is always winter, though sometimes the snow 
and ice melt for a few days in a kind of false spring. 
The summer country is bare and flat, and while he’d love 
to swim sometimes, or walk in the sunshine, it is often much 
too hot and so humid there he can hardly breathe. 
Hurricanes obliterate whole towns, and his friend has to rebuild 
and start all over. In the winter country, there are hills, mountains 
even, if you’re inclined to be generous, and the road to his house 
winds through a forest with maples and oak, birches and evergreens. 
He has a black watch cap and a snowblower he keeps oiled and ready. 
His friend is desperate for him to travel to the summer land, 
promises citrus fruit and seafood, but the man is adamant. 
He owns snowshoes and a pair of cross country skis. 
Some days he wears a balaclava under his hood. 
But finally, he relents. He travels for days, and at last arrives 
at the beach. Heat batters him, humidity brings him to his knees. 
An old woman runs up and wipes his face with a cool, damp cloth. 
She tells him he needs to acclimate slowly, so he does, 
thanking her with words he learned from a dictionary of useful phrases. 
That night, he and his friend drink glass after glass of Sauvignon Blanc. 
Later he dreams of glaciers grinding slowly across the frozen earth.
                        

I can only wonder, as the waves roll in, 
where you’ve gone, you who swam 
like a goddess through the churning surf. 

Once a young student said to me 
you know a lot about myth, 
can you tell me who this is? 

And she lifted her summer blouse 
revealing a large tattoo of Poseidon 
and Amphitrite riding on a dolphin’s back. 

I thought of you then, 
your powerful freestyle strokes, 
your wet hair plastered down your neck. 

You were always a summer girl, at home 
on the hot sand, nimble on the rocks 
as we made our way to the lighthouse. 

All night stars burned in the sky 
as water gurgled and purred. 
We couldn’t stop eating - 

something about the ocean, I guess, 
its salt and the flavors of sandwiches and fruit. 
You would stand before a small crowd, singing 

as boats drifted along the shore. 
I remember that song about a mermaid 
and a man who abandoned his lover for the sea.