Ice

(It's because my eyes are new)

Every color is hiding in the sky, night crawling overhead toward the west
Ice below speaks in a language of color, texture, sound,
telling if it is safe, or not, or
a thrill, in-between. 

These are my people now,
bundled up against the cold, immune
children holding to their parents, and the other way around
bladed ice-skates like tennis-shoes of summer, racing over grass--
no fear

The skyline of the city from the other shore,
lights emerge one-by-one, like Jupiter overhead
orange, blue, purple, crimson-touched trails of cloud
I wish you were here, with your eye, your warm heart.

Beside the vast lake, another people speak in dissonant voices,
flying overhead, approaching me to see if I have food; I disappoint. 
Sit; listen, roar, scrape, wind whistling in my ears,
the flap of wings leaving water, voices of geese, a snap--
Drifts of snow, crisp, waves of wind carved,
snap--lines cut across the drift, zig-zag outward, broken
A rock peers above the waterline from beneath a frozen hat

It is because my eyes are new that I get lost
alone--snap--
in the colors in the sky, heading west,
the way the ice glows, like prism, a sheet of gold,
touched by shards of crimson, waves of orange
I wish you were here, with your eye, your warm heart
bundled against the cold; no fear.

~Kathlean Wolf
12 February 2012




Tonight was the first time, in the four winters I have experienced in Wisconsin, that I've gone down to the lakeshore in winter and watched a sunset over the ice.  I was awestruck by the way the sky caused the ice to glow with a thousand colors, and also melancholy at not being able to share it with someone I care about.