Ice Age - May 16 2026

 

Ice Age

May 16 2026

Winter lingers

in the mountain of snow

where the plow stopped,

deposited

in front of a tall line of trees

that still block the strengthening sun.

Walking by

on a warm spring day

I feel the cold coming off it;

like the sudden chill

when a ghost enters the room.

Of course, there’s nothing malevolent

in a pile of snow

   . . . but still

I feel a shiver up my spine.

A small pool of water

sits on the downstream side.

Like glacial melt, it’s cold as ice,

and like a mountain tarn

reflects the sky;

as unsettled as the weather 

this time of year.

But fresh as it is, it’s also fossilized.

Not for millennia

but at least several months,

arresting time

and preserving what remains of winter;

a hard one

I hardly need reminding of

in this hopeful spring.

Like an archeological dig

it gives up its secrets

layer-by-layer.

Gravel mixed with sand,

stripped from the driveway

and scattered like glacial moraine.

Autumn leaves

that are waterlogged

and the drabbest brown there is.

Downed branches

lost mitts

dead birds,

and some hand-written papers

with painful news

that were snatched by a gust of wind.

Water, 

that will percolate through the soil

and work its way down fissures

in subterranean rock

to some deep dark aquifer,

finding its level

as water inexorably does.

Where it might remain for years

before being drawn up

in some future spring;

an envoy from the past

nourishing

the nascent plants.

Water,

changing phases but conserved;

indestructible as energy

and as indifferent to time

as we wish we were.

It’s May 16, and that dense pile of snow is — remarkably — still there. Although I’ve been looking at it out the kitchen window for so long it’s begun to seem normal! 

Something that’s become so familiar deserves to be memorialized in a poem. So I began by describing it, and then — as usual — just riffed. Where it took me was unplanned: as much a surprise to me as I imagine to the reader. But this is the nature of water. It flows where it flows. And, of course, is conserved. The water cycle, but expressed a little less dryly than your middle school science teacher would!

(I only know the word “tarn” because my neighbour’s dog was named that. (An avalanche rescue dog (retired), so it makes sense.) I could have used “lake” instead:  less obscure, but also less interesting.  And also seems too big.)