I know a man who fell through the ice
and was taken downstream a quarter mile
before he found a crack back to the surface.
He told me that as he felt he would die
he watched children play under hot suns,
his hands buffing the slick underside of the cold,
bubbles blubbing about his ears and helpless nose.
He figured their voices would be muffled
underwater. But no, he said, they came to him
clear as High Definition, as if the silver bubbles
contained then released those voices
in airlessness cold and blue and reminiscent.
He saw a wife folding clothes, holding a frog
to the yellow-haired dog, and lifting it out
of reach with a laugh when the dog tried to bite.
He saw fresh lightning strike poles, a brother home
from war. The brother chewed a worm in the back
yard just to show how relieved he was to be alive.
Wearing loafers on dry mornings with the paper,
a father waving goodbye, a cat at a barn door
licking its paw, pausing, passing back into the hay
inside like a brush tip mixing orange with straw.
The funny thing, the icefriend said, was that none
of these things he’d ever before experienced.
He had no brother, no wife who’d held frogs,
and certainly had no love for keeping cats or barns.
So, after chancing out from under the ice, freezing
but alive on the slippery bank under frail clouds,
he no longer knew himself, so he hurried
to town, changed his name, sold his goods,
and set out on a journey to find a wife, a yellow dog,
creeks nearby for the rearing of frogs, playscapes
for children, and friends for the sharing of stories.
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