A Hole in the Glass Room

We never fished at holes bored in the river ice,
or bloodied the seals, which like black babies, squirmed
through treacherous wells to whimper in the waiting glare
where we would warm ourselves by roiling braziers.
I wish we had. But as it is, for many years
we have stamped the solid floe : the floor between the worlds;
and lowered our greasy baits in through the ceiling of theirs :
the jelling of their medium, which we precariously slide,
mind over matter - more precisely, treading water, say -
afraid of what is hunting what it feeds on under there.
The earth swung down, and one day the thermometer
made zero. So that when, on one side of the ocean, we let drop
a single spark of ice, the reach snapped to :
the bight, the whole tide clanged, and every denizen
was trapped in his brine. We carved our milky windows in.
And it was so, although we have not angled on the ice
the way we boast, or read to dream; for we can tell
the globe will orbit into other tepid regions
and the surge beneath, perhaps, come splashing up the spout holes
till the slab we stand on turns, in time, to slush.

© 1981 Nicholas Messenger

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