Florida FAST Practice Test 7

Ice-Out

¹All winter the lake kept its own counsel,

²a gray lid hammered over the dark,

³and we walked out on it like careless guests

⁴who never wonder what the host is thinking.

⁵My father measured it each Sunday with an auger,

⁶reading the inches the way some men read scripture,

⁷and told us, Four will hold a man. Twelve, a truck.

⁸Less than that, and the lake will tell you no.

⁹Then March came in with its wet gloves on.

¹⁰The lid went soft at the edges, then sullen,

¹¹then shot through with long white seams

¹²like the cracks in a plate no one will admit to breaking.

¹³For a week the lake groaned at night,

¹⁴a low complaint that traveled the shore

¹⁵and set the dogs to answering.

¹⁶I thought the breaking would be violent.

¹⁷Instead, one morning, the ice was simply gone—

¹⁸not shattered, not carried off, but given back,

¹⁹the water lying open and astonished,

²⁰taking the whole sky in at once

²¹as if it had been holding its breath since November.

²²My father stood on the dock with his hands in his pockets.

²³He did not say anything about inches.

²⁴He watched the open water a long time, the way you watch

²⁵someone sleeping who has been sick and is not sick now.