Pat Winslow
How Ice Is Formed
Thin wands is how it starts - or seems to with the naked eye -
and some are peacock quills. Still others spread like leaves
flattened and beaten under the hammers of the moon.
On colder nights they hinge into a featherscape,
an interlocking of wings. Like a swan's been trapped
beneath the surface, its last gasp hidden by a dead white span.
Worse is the frozen silence, the ring of iron
when you skim a stone to the other side, the debris of traffic cones,
a coke can on the injured back, the battlefield of sticks.
By day it creaks and shifts. You dare not walk on it for fear
of drowning with them. You stand and stare and think of open mouths,
glass bubbles held in suspended animation, bullet-time photography.
This is what it takes to unbend a pond and close the door on another year.
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