Thaw

Thaw

Conditions are essential in this interstitial place:
a degree or two lower, and the melt becomes slick--
warmer, and the drip is a rushing brook.

We imagine it as linear, but the thaw hovers,
fractals, spirals,
teasing,
sculpting miniature caves
with stalactites and stalagmites
more surreal than the ones chipped from
our children's imaginations.

I am drawn to the variations in ice, to the delicate crust that
shatters at the slightest pressure,
to the thicker spots where bubbles
have been trapped mid-rise, offering
fantastic patterns and refractions in
translucence and transparency,
to the stained-glass crazes that must be mathematical.

My children test these surfaces with me,
slipping, breaking, cracking, smashing.

Underneath, the constant background sound of flow
is oddly comforting,
a pulse that we can only take
in the waiting rooms of spring.