Poem 109

This was another Original Composition exercise that ended up in my portfolio that year … the challenge Bill gave us was to write a ‘looking at’ poem in similar form to Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens … I cast about for something that I could spin in a number of ways and settled on ice … in a few days I wrote over forty little poems and then boiled it down to a tight ten …

( Salinas is a reference to the movie East of Eden – the scene where an experiment to ship lettuces by refrigerated train fails – and Macondo is from One Hundred Years of Solitude in which the first block of ice the townspeople have ever seen is mistaken for a diamond … )

Ice

                  i

ice
gripped the stem
and squeezed the flower
out


		ii

the ice grew
on our silence
now
we are afraid
the sound of our voices
will crush us


		iii

at the party

rather than trying to break the ice
she clambered up onto it
and skated
away


                 iv

I
am
ice
glacial
deliberate
a million years
are hardly enough
to put the rubbish out


		v

didn't you ever wonder
where your mother went
or why
there was a lock
on the
freezer?


		vi

something
settled on his wings
and brought him down
Icarus
in reverse


		vii

I chipped out speech
like brittle ice
you turned on
the blow-dryer


		viii

is it you
or your neighbour
in the ice?
both of you prance about
hoping to catch
the other out


		ix

outside Salinas
the carriages streaming water
Macondo
the chill exhalation
from the chest
the world's largest diamond


		x

what do you mean
he said,
no more
ice?