Odd Ice

It takes time for the ice to build on the river,
for the free flowing water to harden
like a heart. The freeze does not happen
all at once, but slowly,

so slowly those who pass by each day
barely see it, barely see the ice creep
like a killing skin, barely

see the life leave the river’s channel,
until suddenly their eyes open and the river is gone,
replaced by the dead white of ice,
thick, hard, a painful beauty,

the wild yearning now underneath,
desperate…. hungry…. mad
for spring.

About this poem

The picture was taken from a train window as I traveled along the Hudson River a couple of weeks ago.

In Virginia, where I spent much of my life, rivers don’t freeze. They don’t become places you can walk over. You don’t get the huge blocks of ice that clog rivers and streams from shore to shore like they do here in New England.

But, in Virginia, everywhere in fact, people’s hearts grow slowly cold when battered by life or lovers. We protect ourselves with ice. Sometimes spring breaks through. And sometimes it doesn’t.

Tom