Fracture Line

May 13 2013

Fracture lines

materialize

on a warm day in spring.

And within a week

the lake breaks-up,

scattered ice, in jig-saw bits

before erratic winds.

Fragments

that will vanish

in an hour of sun,

or big enough

to float away on.

Who knows

where the weakness lies.

Is the fracture line

determined at freeze-up?

Or is it all dumb luck;

some darkness marring the surface

melting early,

a windrow of snow

reflecting sun?

Like the fork in the road

one may have taken, or never begun;

but either way, comforts himself

that this was meant to be.

Melted pools

of indeterminate depth

nest like lakes on lakes.

Where famished geese will rest,

the early arrivals

before this endless winter ends.

Downwind, ice piles up.

Like tectonic plates

they subduct, grinding the shore,

open and close

ebb, re-form.

While water warms,

and even deeper down

earth boils.

From the surface

we can only infer.

The silty bottom, murky depths

where fish have slept

all winter.

Fat and benthic, they lurk unseen,

pelagic and sleek

they slip with silky stealth.

A cold war

of eaten, and eat

in this dark unknowable world.

A descriptive poem, a simple seasonal piece, but with hints of the metaphysical: allusions to escape, and precariousness; to fate and free will; to hidden depths upon hidden depths (such as in "waters, nesting", for the pools that form on top of the ice; and then, in "the earth boils", plunging all the way down to magma.) I hope the ending conveys a sense of delight and mystery, as well as of resigned finality; resigned that is, to the inexorable cycle -- and cruelty -- of life. It's that last stanza, as well as the first, that are my favourites.

I'm not too thrilled with the "fork in the road ...wilful agent/ or creature of fate" bit: it seems to be saying it more than showing it; which is what prose is supposed to do, and poetry assiduously avoid. So if this strikes you, the reader, as too didactic or pretentious or obvious or clichéd, I might be persuaded to lose it.

I struggle with the title. Because I'm more taken with the idea of the unseen and the deceptive surface than I am with the idea of precarious fate; and it's the latter that Fracture Line is meant to imply. But standing on its own, I think Fracture Line is more evocative than something like Surfaces, or Nesting Waters, or Tectonic Ice (maybe because "fracture" is as much verb as noun). If you think otherwise, please let me know. I'm more than willing to re-visit this. (Although, come to think of it, in the science of plate tectonics fracture lines are invisible -- hidden under our feet, and underground.) I might even consider the whimsicality of Float Away On -- the inelegance of a dangling preposition notwithstanding! (A potential title makes me think of Joni Mitchell's wonderful song River. If you've never heard it, please listen.)