The poetry of ice

This Christmas might be the first white Christmas for all of Canada since 1971.   To celebrate, I’d like to point you to my friend Jeremy Hiebert’s stunning collection of photos of ice from Lake Okanagan.   This is not a photo collection, it is a poem of the highest order.   Sit still and watch the slideshow fill your eyes with the wonder of this earth.

And to accent it here is a poem from me, using the wonderful language of ice:

Crawl to the edge of the fast ice

where the ice front holds still

as the pancakes form up.

Not from the breakdown of nilas or ice rind

this pancake forms under the swell that tossess

slush ice, shuga and grease around in the bay.

This morning a lump of anchor ice rose

honeycombed and rotten and washed ashore

stranded on the beach.

Out in the open sea, ice sky glistens

with ice blink where the multiyear floes

nip each other, calve and tumble and raft.

crowding the polynya with brash

turning up bummocks

on the growlers and bergy bits

tonight I head inland across the rime

home to a warm room

and an old book on navigation and hazards

The leads will open in spring

and the water sky returns, dark and hopeful

icefeet slowly retreating to the beach.

Winter is here.