Augur
April 13 2014


A closed loop
downward spiral.

It bites in, circling smoothly
binding briefly, working free. 

Easy as butter, tunnelling down through ice
3 feet thick.

The single helix
was beautiful, in its symmetry.
Like a perpetual motion machine,
around and around
narrowing down
to its point. 
Hand-driven,
its carbon steel is bluish smooth
sharp-edged flange
undulled by use.

Then breaking through.
A cold clear geyser
turning the snow
wet, grey, dense,
flooding my feet
as it urgently spread,
released
from black compressed stillness.
As if the pent-up lake
were greedily breathing in.

Like false spring, an augury of summer.
Before the freeze
hammers it shut.


I read a poem by Brecken Hancock called Winter, Frontal Lobe, which hinged on the image of an ice axe breaking through. The unusual word "tarn" was used. I know a dog called "Tarn", and remembered that this meant mountain lake. Somehow, the combination of these images -- the axe, the glacial lake -- made me think of an ice augur. Which is where this poem began.

I don't ice fish, and I've never used an augur. But I can picture that sudden release of water; sense the suffocating weight of ice and the hungry breath of freedom. And then the frozen hand of winter, clamping down again.

The weakness of the poem is that it's purely descriptive and rather impersonal. And certainly a lot more linear than Winter, Frontal Lobe. On the other hand, there is something metaphorical about this feeling of suffocation and over-powering weight: of being repressed, held helplessly down, rendered powerless, by the irresistible forces of fate.

The play on "augur" and "augury" is either obvious and heavy-handed, or cleverly inspired. I'm not sure which!