I get down on the floor, do pushups
until my arms shake and falter.
It’s a good number, a number to build upon.
Kneeling, I turn on the television
to a football game in progress.
One team is winning, one is losing.
My wife has left me.
Fresh snow fell in the night
and I imagine my children on new sleds
being tugged uphill by another man,
their mittens drawing wobbly lines in the snow.
And out of this thin, shut-in winter air
small questions take shape.
Is it OK to drink champagne alone
and offer a silent toast to the coming year?
And how is it that shorebirds survive
in such icy water
with legs thinner than pencils?
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 1.
Michael Brosnan is the longtime editor of Independent School, an award-winning quarterly magazine on precollegiate education. His book, Against the Current: How One School Struggled and Succeeded with At-Risk Teens (Heinemann), focused on urban education reform, was the basis for the 2009 documentary film Accelerating America. His poetry and stories have appeared in various literary magazines, including Confrontation, Puckerbrush Review, Prairie Schooner, Barrow Street, Borderlands, New Letters, and The Chattahoochee Review.
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