In the afternoon, late,
you slept in the trunk
of a well-rooted dream.
I tore apart time
looking for a memory,
found it, dropped it;
a fish back in water,
a seed on a sidewalk.
During supper,
we forgot what we were after,
some kind of history
we were expected to make.
The night came on,
ice melting just above freezing.
We readied ourselves:
cautious, glad.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is a poem of ideas, but ideas revealed in images, not statements. Like everyday life,
there is a lot we have to figure out, to make sense of on our own. The title, Thin Ice holds
the interpretive clue. Life is like walking on thinning ice. The sleeper in the first stanza is
makes no effort to be visited by a dream. The person in the second stanza puts a great
deal of effort into recollecting a memory. Once the memory comes to mind, it is hard to hold
it and learn from it. We as adults are expected to make some contribution to history’s greater
good. Whatever we do brings a certain kind of danger. So we proceed cautiously but glad that
we might make a difference.