Elizabeth Bradfield

prelude to "Approaching Ice"

Because this life, this alarm clock time card
percolator direct deposit income tax stop light

seems vast and blank and numbing.

Tell me secret orchids hide
between the black rock and the ice.

Tell me a wild bird sings deep
in the crevasses, wingstrokes cracking air.

Tell me there’s a surface we can walk on
lidding miles of plumed and luminescent fish.

I’m ready to be amazed. I’m longing for it.

Elizabeth Bradfield

The prelude to "Approaching Ice" first appeared in Ice-Floe: International Poetry of the Far North, Summer Solstice 2003, Vol. IV No 1

Posted on May 9, 2009 10:10 AM