Snowlight

The lake is a glazed mirror, a shining
window we traverse

as eagerly as one’s eyes trace frost lines
                                  etching polygons

and trapeziforms on rectangular panes.
It is bitter cold

and we are warm at heart, our full moon watch
                                  over solid water layered

with days of boats and drill of pileated beak,
the loon’s silent dive

and waves of reeds waving in wind or rain.

                                  Place a stick in water

and it bends as our eyes bend to take all this
icespace in,

a calm oneness forged from the sun’s cold fire
                                  sung in ursa major’s

inverted eastward turn. How can we even talk
about past present future

when hemlock tips and water road of ice
                                  and outcropped rocks

are whitely frozen, joined in each step forward
or behind

and at rest in motion’s motionlessness?
                                  If we freeze

a particle of light in space, we lose its speed,
if we freeze

its speed, we lose its place: Here. When? Then. Where?

The lake is a glazed mirror, a shining
window we traverse

and see sun and moon shine in sudden
                                  snowlight

flashing between trees and each caparisoned rock
as we ascend

descending slopes to our home in the heart’s

                                  now, here, nowhere.


                                  John Kryder


Poems