Ice

Ice

Where the river bled out into marsh 
The water grew thin enough to freeze 
All the way through. 
An insult to us boys, 
Who were so used to breaking
Any ice we came sliding across. 
We were known to put a boot or two
Through the window of a frozen puddle,
Pull off one icicle to shatter the others,
Jump on the roof of a pond 
And jump off just as it caved in. 
But none of our tactics worked out there.
The ice didn’t so much as flinch 
When we kicked it, which made us mad, 
Which made us kick it harder, 
Which made us madder still.
Had even one crack appeared, 
We might have walked away, 
Satisfied to have made our point.
But we couldn’t show weakness, 
So we got serious.
Twisting the branches off willows —
We weren’t the ones
Who made them cry,
They were in tears 
Before we got there —
We jabbed at the ice
With the splintered ends,
But the branches kept bouncing
Back into our hands, as if,
Having been broken themselves,
They sympathized
With what we were trying to break.
Remembering the train
That had run years before
We were born, we found
Rusted iron spikes
We brought down with two hands
Like we were trying to kill a vampire 
But only ended up cutting ourselves, 
Sprinkling his chest
With the blood he desired. 
So we pawed rocks out of the drifts 
The plows had piled either side of the road
And took turns losing our breath
Pounding its face in.
But the divots we made were nothing 
More than marks to aim at 
To make the divots deeper.
Nothing we did seemed to change 
The essential structure. 
How had the cattails done it?
We wondered.
Somehow they'd pierced 
The ice clean through
And stood as straight as spears
Plunged in ground
Won hard in battle. 
The warmth of life in their stems
Had melted the ice around them
In holes the shape and size that
Bullets make in glass.
Through the translator of the wind
They told us it was simple.
They’d been there before the ice was.
All they’d done was stay.
Irrelevant advice for us,
Who’d come too late.
The ice had won.
Frustrated, we spat in its face
And went off to find something 
Weaker to break. 
But if I could go back now —
It's January and I know
It's frozen solid again —
I know what I’d do.
I’d brush a spot clear of snow
And build a little fire,
Leaning in to blow it to life,
Closing my eyes tight against the smoke, 
Adding twigs as it grows
Until the ice begin to melt and run,
Betraying what it was all along —
Muddy water.
We never had to break it.
We could have gathered
What we had at hand —
Dry needles and twigs and dead leaves —
Gotten down on our knees
And burned it away our breath.