THE GREAT FREEZE AND THE THAW

The Great Freeze began slowly

With icy sleet filling the days

Stilling blood flow with stress

A swift break in weather

Led me into the unexplored

The waiting wilderness of chaos

There I trudged along

While sleet shifted into snow,

Snow into blizzard

The years passed

With a numbing silence

In which the glacier grew

Now and then, a crack sounded

A groan from within the glacial wall

Every Summer, but still no thaw

Ten frozen years

The only flowering, frost crystals

Quickly melting from my window

Then the time of fever rose

To add its heat to Spring’s warming

And the glacier calved into avalanche

Long-frozen water bled

Out over ice-sheet fields

Tumbled over cliffs

Growing wider, deeper

Flowing unconfined

Toward serenity in lake and sea

Words, freed from the ice

Of stolen time, spill from my fingers

I have begun to write again with joy