Thin Ice

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

There is always one winter morning

that is the first winter morning

for ice on the pond.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising to those

who have lived decades

in the north next to still water,

But, for me, it still remains a wonderment,

an ordinary miracle made possible

by elements conspiring

to wake us with befuddling

predictability.

We have a ritual,

this particular winter morning

and I.

I wait for the sunlight to come,

anticipating the spectrum of colors

dancing among the gas bubbles

trapped in the glassy-crust.

And when it does come,

memory transports me back to my youth:

I am watching small wall-rainbows emerging from

crystalline prisms hanging from lamps

in a home that we once thought

was quiet and tender.

And then I’m in my teens:

The minister arose and ventured

onto the frozen reservoir,

and with the confident stride of a

once-Olympic skater,

drove forward until he found a place

thin enough to free him

of this world.

The imaginary me has stood,

for many a winter,

at the gaping hole left by his

sinking body,

asking questions about beliefs

and vows

and faith.

Now older, I focus on the red-spotted

newts and the snapping turtles moving

in the cold waters below the ice:

No one ever told me they could.

By the rules I was taught,

they can’t.

But they are.

They are there shuffling their thick legs

and looking, golden-eyed, back at me

with not a glint of surprise.

I love this ice, thin as it is.

It reminds me that 
that which can be readily explained 

is sometimes

best left

to wonderment.

~ Jamie K. Reaser, Author
From "Wonderment: New and Selected Poems" (a work in progress)

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