Sunday, September 17, 2006

Sunday is as good a day as any

from your perch
on the bank there
bend down
and brush the snow
from the ice
that holds all of space
between here
and past the stars

cold black empty
and transparent
pricked with sparks

lay your hand softly
there
yes
just there
feel the shiver and gambol
of the stream running
beneath the ice
over sunlit pebbles

lean slowly
into your hand
feel the ice sag
the faint shocks
that travel
through your bones
just before
the glass cracks

the cold slices hot
into your vein

watch the red
running out
to join the stream
running away
under the ice

3 comments:

Keifus said...

When I was a kid, my friends and I would hike down in the woods in back of my house in the winter (summer too, of course, but winter was better). There was a stream that went through there, and it was great fun to romp on down it, cracking ice, breaking off icicles, sliding along on our asses where we could.

Down at the bottom, it opened into one of the town flood-control reservoirs. The stream flowed through a tall culvert (excellent ass-sliding there) and then stopped going so much downhill, but spread out leisurely near the road as it meandered its last leg toward the pond and the dam.

The ice froze pretty thin on the flowing water for much of the year, but it was a little thicker on the slower moving section. Sometimes it would get to that perfect thickness, about an inch or maybe three quarters of an inch, just barely enough to support the weight of a child or two. One of us at a time would gingerly move out to the middle of the stream, and when the ice gave, it would be with a satisfying drawn-out weightlessness. For a long moment, the hart ice was soft and yielding before plunk! we went through. Now and then we scrambled away in time.

The biggest injury was wet boots, but I did cut my eye once scrambling through the culvert.

A happier memory, perhaps, but I recognized that transitional moment.

Keifus (brought to you by "vegpm")

tiger barbs said...

thanks for that! you brightened my day considerably with that little slice of life. what fun that must have been.

i've lived practically all my life down here where the only ice is that which floats in glasses of tea. only once have i been far enough north in winter to encounter an iced-over stream, and yes, the ice did break when i leaned on it [wet gloves the only casualty there].

i'm glad to hear that i've remembered that sensation fairly accurately.

as for that last bit, i don't ever remember ice being that sharp, but i've been thinking the odd dark thought or two lately, so that just worked its way in at the end.

ps. you can be sure i'm adding your two word verifications to the "works in progress" below [as well as the ones i've generated here]. i thank you kindly for them.

Anonymous said...

Winter's only much fun if you're a kid, I think.

Also, you didn't answer my question: an anagram or what? I'm dying to know (not really, but mildly curious).

K (fmqzzf--that should be tough to fit in)