It is a village on the living tundra
of the ice.
Small huts where a man or woman
can retreat deep in their thoughts.
A string between their fingers,
fishing for something whose thoughts
are less dark than their own.
Less illusive than the shadows
and roaring wind outside the walls
around them
Where they can escape without dying,
or die, but not go over the river Styx
and be lost.
Along its shore where life
doesn’t follow.
Doesn’t disturb the solitude one finds.
That calms ache and crying inside life.
A sanctuary on the thin ice of oblivion,
sweet and full of tenderness.
The clear ice of tears and dreams.
And now and again
a shout in the bitter cold,
between their legs
a yank on the line.
The tension of one thing calling another.
Like love signaling to love.
Throwing off its mask,
and fighting the other,
to be pulled to the warmth of its
conqueror.
While unbeknown
another fate is negotiated by the wind
and current,
dragging the ice beyond the safety
of the shore,
beyond the reach of prey or predator.
Beyond the island of their war.
The fisherman pulls his catch through
the hole, to land the silver violence
of the fish at his feet,
while the white death of the ice
seals his fate.
The hut drifting away into the wind,
to its drowning in the depths
of the cold.