Today, Luna and I returned to our daily walking. The picture accompanying this blog shows what about half of the 2/3 mile path around the city park looked like. This was our fourth pass in the park, and you still can barely see footprints. It was like walking on an ice rink. Oddly enough, the walking path facing south and east was not only mostly ice-free, but it was dry also. Anyhow, I got a very different type of walking workout. I feel like I have been ice skating. The inside of my thighs are stretched to the point of pain. You know, ice skating must be a very good exercise.
Anyway, speaking of exercise, since the theme of my thoughts today seemed to be snow, ice, and cold, I thought that I would find an old poem that had to do with such things. I guess that I am not a writer of cold. I only found a few bits and pieces that mentioned anything other than frozen hearts and emotions, yeah silly romantic stuff. Therefore, I knew that in a poem for the new book Atheists and Empty Spaces, I mimic what has been called the coldest poem in the English language, John Keats' St. Agnes' Eve. See if you think that I have captured cold in this section. This is Part One of a fairly long and psychologically dense poem. Enjoy!
On a scarred hilltop stripped of all its trees,
A man lies quaking in a wooden cage,
A crib that blocks nor warms the cutting breeze,
A monument to someone’s icy rage.
He lies in slushy mud, nose to his knees,
And shivers as he searches memories
For who it was and what he has done wrong
And why that person’s hatred is so strong.
A freezing drizzle falls from steely skies
And melts in puddles on the muddy floor.
It mixes with the tears that sting his eyes
Until his ducts deliver them no more.
He kneels against the rope-tied door and pries.
He thinks he must break out before he dies
And leaves this world not knowing what he’s done
Or who would torture some poor mother’s son.
His trembling hands test every stick and knot.
His mind recalls each adversary’s face.
He pokes his limbs through every open slot
And finds the poles fixed firmly in their place.
No weakness can he find, not one damned spot,
Nor enemy whose ire would be so hot
As to condemn him to a death of ice
Without so much as seeking alibis.
The daylight fades into a falling snow.
He has no blanket nor a stitch of clothes.
Can he survive this night? He does not know.
The odds seem greater with each breath he blows.
Yet human noises haunt the woods below
And haloes rise above some man-made glow.
His hopes revive; he starts to walk in place,
And thinks tomorrow he may plead his case.
Sometime near dawn, the snow clouds blow away,
And bitter northern winds shake ice-gripped grass.
The man’s tired shuffle hardly is a sway;
His feet are freezing in the crib’s morass.
When the black darkness cracks with a new day,
He deems his only option is to pray
That one pretending god will end his wrath;
And, look, a wraith appears upon a path!
The specter, moving slowly, wears a hood
And carries in its hands a pot or plate.
It often stops and stares back at the wood
As if its burden bids it hesitate.
The prisoner feels no qualms and if he could,
The indecision would do him no good,
For, in his mind, the phantom in the cape
Is now his first and best chance to escape.
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