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Posts Tagged ‘ice’

How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 13, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
Teachers and fathers,
bakers and builders,
sisters in plaid shirts
and sons with shy smiles
kicked and punched,
sprayed and tackled,
grabbed and tased
and thrown to the ground,
locked up and jailed,
despised, dehumanized.
What is the heart to do when,
in the face of brutality, we hear
not only weeping, but cheering?
How do we go on?
Maybe you choose to ignore it.
Maybe you tell yourself,
this doesn’t affect me.
Maybe you rationalize.
Maybe you feel your heart break
again and again, as seed walls
must give for a seedling to grow.
Maybe you notice breaking open
is the only way love can go on.
Maybe you turn toward
life, belonging, respect
and ask your longing to grow you,
to guide your hands, your breath.
Maybe you say to the ache,
teach me, bless me, enliven me.
Maybe you listen more deeply.
Maybe you find other broken hearts
with heartbeats that rhyme with your own.
The terror is real. Fear is strong.
We are still here. How will we go on?

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Amidst the Cold of Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »

 
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together  
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.

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News of the War

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 25, 2022| 7 Comments »




The newscaster speaks
and beneath you
the floor becomes ice
and the world
is speeding
on balding tires
and the moment
is the highway
and all is fishtail
and the brakes
are useless now—
and the cliff so close
and you brace
against nothing
and the only way
to correct a slide
is to turn
into the slide—

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Concentric

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 26, 2018| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

See, I want to say to my son. See

how the pond has frozen in thick,

 

continuous curves. See all the lines,

how they ring each other, like dozens

 

of tiny orbits. I want to show him

the marvel of it all, but he is too old

 

now for marvels, or perhaps too young,

the precise age where beauty is boring.

 

And so I take the child of myself to the pond

and show her the rings. I resist the urge

 

to explain how the meltwater formed them,

how surface-tension forces make liquid melt

 

cling against the lower parts of the ice.

Instead, I let her gaze at the miracle,

 

trace the concentric bands with her fingers.

How curious the rings are, like frozen halos

 

that fit enormous angels. How astonishing

in their design. Just wait till I show her

 

we can walk on it, too. I let her amazement

become my own, our feet slipping

 

across the smooth surface, our breath

rising in white ephemeral curls.

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Five Currents

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 28, 2016| 6 Comments »

 

 

 

choked with ice

the river impedes itself—

I catch myself

thinking

it is beautiful

 

*

 

why dream

of unrestricted days

says the part of me

that stands

in my way

 

 

*

 

love, let us

be naked together—

how did we ever

get fooled that we

are not enough?

 

*

 

dark current

its edges invisible—

just because

we can’t see the path

doesn’t mean it isn’t there

 

*

 

a lifetime,

not long enough

to watch the river move across itself

and still this moment

holds everything

 

 

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Walking on the River Ice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 21, 2013| 3 Comments »

I love this place beneath the cliff.
The sun does not shine here all winter.
The water flows and the water
stops itself in the cold and the water
finds a new way. I remember
how quiet it was when I told you
what you did not want to hear.
Perhaps the clock kept keeping time
but the moon stopped.
I think of how much has changed
since then. And how much
life is the same. The silence
here is beautifully made. It is more than
the small sound of the moving
river. It is more than memory.
Suffering is not the only truth.
There is joy. There is grace.
There is peace.

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