18 December 2016

I walked back the Christ-cracked
ice to shore.
The entombed river churned.
The fish were restless,
bored with the collective
conscious of winter.
To break the surface, breathe
air was all.  Snow lay peaked
along the shores, like frozen egg whites,
lemony light was folded into.
Birch stood watch,
in one of which
sat perched, purple,
plumped against the cold,
a jay that watched west,
what, I could not see.
West, the sky was
the white-grey of marble,
a tomb sky, to match
the ice-entombed river.
The jay cawed.  The crack widened.
A thaw was anxious to get underway.
I could sense
a burgeoning
building.

Philip Kuepper
(3 December 2016)