Redemption of Ice

by Jennifer Landretti

Let our ice melt at last

after this long and killing winter.

Let the crooked snags

drip in the mouths

of our emptiest caves

and burble like doves in the light

of a promising spring; meltwater,

call the rains into your rush,

uncloud the boundless sky,

stripe the mountainsides!

Softening paws of snow,

slip from windfalls

and go clear in the torrent.

Freshets of turquoise,

wing over the blinding cliff

and throw your sheets to the wind

as you fall toward the blackness

of deeper waters.

Let the ice slough

from the hedge thorns

and heap at roadside

in shattered imbrications.

Bruised ditches,

heal. Razors of glazed soil

yield to our stumbling,

cradle us in mud.

Slate-roofed cathedrals,

weep with melting;

let the rivulets wash

your towering windows

and pummel the furrows

beneath your eaves.

Let them plant the seedshine

along your stones

that grows the colors

of Yahweh’s bow.

Fill the air with kisses.

Thaw the lump of wine.

Let our ministers of enmity

melt their hearts in this grand

transubstantiation

of ice.

Call in our empire builders

to watch as so much ice

goes out to sea. Let the floes

clear the continental shelf. See it all:

a bleached plain of sun-softened slopes

gathering and going, creaking and breaking,

shouldering over like whales.

Sea of night skies–from wavecaps

to Andromeda–draw it all

deep, beyond the gloom

of lurid rifts

bear it true to the land of foes

we once imagined, to a shore

where women and men, brutalized,

unbeaten, stagger down burnt rocks

and limp across the smoking sands—

so many survivors gathered at

the edge of ruin.

See them squat near the surf,

sheltering their children

as a mystifying foam sweeps

in and speaks to their toes:

the sibilance of a heart

newly melted, sighs

that suffer to send the sounds

of love’s oldest articulations,

the hiss of regenerate ice.