prelude to “Approaching Ice”

Because this life, this alarm clock time card

percolator direct deposit income tax stop light

seems vast and blank and numbing.

Tell me secret orchids hide

between the black rock and the ice.

Tell me a wild bird sings deep

in the crevasses, wingstrokes cracking air.

Tell me there’s a surface we can walk on

lidding miles of plumed and luminescent fish.

I’m ready to be amazed. I’m longing for it.

The prelude to “Approaching Ice” first appeared in Ice-Floe: International Poetry of the Far North, Summer Solstice 2003, Vol. IV No 1