Girl Lost
on the Ice, 1914
What
stillness sits between these cracks of frozen water broken apart of
sub-zeros splitting
like
kindling on these vast plains of ice I walk on and on for fear the
crust thin and sharp as a familiar voice
will
break and heave apart in this glowering this evening of the lake
there is no welcome only the rumblings of empty
and your
shapeless call to follow on the which-way wind I stumble my own gasps
hanging long and frozen on my face: white on white
into the
double white of darkness looming, luminous like your skin and warm
as cows' milky breath
into the
foaming drifts of dairy cream I sink at last in sleep enfolded in
your strong arms of birch.
Leslie
Smith Dow Ottawa, Ontario (from The Pioneer Poems: The Life
and Times of Alice Maude) |