B.L. Gentry
Stealing
Just when he was about to show
me how to drive, I stole
the snowmobile. Just shot out
from the bank and left
the fisherman and his flapping scarf
marooned in snow.
I'd figured it out, heard enough to know
about the gas tank, and the key,
the red lever I pushed to go,
how the front fender's hollow
back would hide the inch of my shin,
bristled and innocuous as cookie dough,
exposed between the cuff of my coveralls
and borrowed shoes. I knew it all. I was glad
to be rid of his eel's face,
the closeness of his skin,
pocked red and white.
What he wanted, I had to know
somewhere in my frozen
brain. Breath that had bent too
close for miles at the back
of my helmet dissipated
in the arctic air as through a low
hedge I roared, and onto a lake,
following tracks a caribou
had scattered, as if in a hurry
to split the air and snow,
with no thought to what his hooves might punch through,
if he stopped long enough,
the black ice swathed in snow.