Apparently the time change for me was to turn back the time by two days, since this poem is for Saturday. Getting back to my schedule here…
A Little Thaw
by Bernadette E. Kazmarski
The silence of ice
hard-smooth glaringly mocking
a manufactured perfection
life, birth, spring
held captive in plain view
under a solid clear glaze
pale world strangely hushed
I tiptoe through
afraid to break the surface with my sound
but a snap, a crack, a drip, another
whispers return to life around me
once broken, the ice cannot hold its captives
dripping, pattering, babbling
life begins again
the stream torrent rushing
beneath the clear, fragile, broken cage of its captor.
poem © 2009 B.E. Kazmarski
The deepest part of winter has frozen everything in place. Colors are muted. The stillness is deafening.
The hard freeze of midwinter can seem like walking through a dystopian landscape where once there was life but some cataclysm stopped all life in place, even the splashes of a waterfall down the rock face. Within the ice in the shallow pond leaves are held still in the graceful postures as they had moved in the water, tendrils of pond moss are paused in the middle of a wave, all as still as a tableau.
I feel like an intruder as I step softly in my clumsy insulated boots along the wide trail, trying not to crunch on the snow and even the soft sound of my camera's shutter seems intrusive. Looking around, trying to hold the memory of this frozen place that I know so well, remembering walking right here, barefoot, in summer, imagining a way I'd represent and share this experience in some creative effort.
But a little later I hear soft sounds, a drip, a trickle, a crack. A few hours of bright winter sunshine have warmed the limestone cliff above the quarry pond that seep groundwater dripping down the rock face, melting the surface of the ice, falling with a surprised splash into a small open area of the quarry pond, one by one, and in time in a constant patter. The gray of the limestone and yellow of the winter sun color this image into a burnished antique gold.
Later still, just as the sun disappears behind the hill to the west the sound of life returning still expresses its joy all around me like a jug band of musicians in every direction making music on whatever is handy. This silent place can become so noisy on a bright afternoon with all the water dripping and the stream surging with icemelt, and the birds making the best of a clear day to stock up on food and sing their good night songs. What a change to witness from the moment I'd stepped onto the trail in the frozen stillness from the time I left.
Nearly everything will freeze again as the warm sunlight creeps up the limestone cliff and fades into the tree tops, the sky grows dark, and in the clear star-filled night the moon will reflect on the ice, but also on the bits of open water that will not freeze again until next winter.
A little earlier I mentioned imagining a way I'd share this experience, thinking then of a painting but realized I'd captured a good bit of what I felt with my photos from that day, and soon after reviewing and processing them that I wrote this poem. There's a painting in there too, somewhere.
Just watching this process of cycles that happen on their own as we tag along with the changes it brings never ceases to amaze me. I can visit this spot at any time, and it's all happening even when I'm not there to see it. Life is change. Time continues moving forward. But it also moves in circles that give us time to adjust to our present between the past and the future.
Of course, it's a metaphor for many things, this brief freeze then the continuation. Life stops, or seems to, with events in our everyday lives. The combined losses of six of my precious rescued felines in two years slowed me until I decided to just be with the grief, minimally participating in life for a while, like autumn into winter. In time I felt some healing in the way I had experienced the first few sounds along the trail indicating the ice had begun to melt, and let that process happen on its own, moving with the slow progress then stasis then movement again, in the way that winter ends and spring begins. Cycles bring change around, and I am forever changed by that experience, but I can move with the cycles while I accept the change and bring the memories with me.
I hope you've enjoyed this week's Poem for Saturday, “A little Thaw.” Thanks for listening.
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