He sits and squints through little slits

in his eyelids while watching ice skaters

at the Olympics, especially, as the skaters

 

fly across the ice preparing for some triple

or even a quadruple this, that or the other.

He’s old enough to know that gravity

 

will pull the skaters back down to earth

ever so fast, but hopefully, he thinks,

they will go into Olympic slow-motion

 

post performance play in actual per-

formance time and land on a dime.

Sometimes he even has to look between

 

his index and third fingers like a Zorro

mask and sometimes closing them

shut before he knows if the skater has

 

made the jump and landed on all two or

not. Sometimes, he forgets about trying to

watch through the closed fingers, closes

 

his eyes and listens for a collective

cheer or groan for that matter from the

crowd who actually paid to be at the

 

event – people like moms and pops

and promoters and coaches and

others like that before he opens his

 

 

eyes. Afterward, as he lowers his

Lone Ranger mask hand to pick up the

glass of Sauvignon Blanc given to him

 

and his wife as a gift when their friends

came to visit. He sips and breathes a sigh of

relief. Either way, thank God, he thinks, it is

over for the moment.