Getting off the bus near Myrtle Park on Monday evening, where the trail descends steeply towards the park. Of course it is hard-packed snow now, and I remember the local kids shouting on the weekend as they hurtled down that hillside, polishing the surface to a dimpled ice.

At the bottom of the hill a chain-link fence marks the soccer field’s periphery, but all is white beyond it now: no more goal lines, no rules or regulations. I edge gingerly downhill with my laptop in its padded backpack, and a Duthie’s book bag with The New Yorker, Brick, and my journal, tucked inside.

And I’m half hoping that the world will take my feet out from under me, will send me flat upon my ass and swooping down that hill towards the fence at high speed. Shouting, like the kids I’d watched on the weekend from the sidelines; too old, I’d felt, to indulge in that again.

Because that would be something real to write about. That, at least, might make a poem.