Category: General

After the storm, spindles of ice turn a length of driftwood into a sparkly comb, and a forsaken branch nearby bears ice down to the stone.

Anchored in a resolute stance between jutting shards of rubble, repeated lashings of water and freezing spells have burdened the wooden frame. However, a thousand gale-driven waves have not been able to shake it from its moorings.

A sculpture carved in adversity at the edge of the lake, it resembles a silent harp resting on its side. With strings ever more shellacked as winter deepens, the harp seems both haunted and haunting, a formerly melodic rib cage benumbed by cycles of fear and grief. And as the storms intensify, layers of icy bulk cling more fiercely to the body: a freeze frame of memory rendered visible.

Come the melts of spring, the icy coat dissolves and bare driftwood testifies to the hardship it has endured — rough exterior sanded, an extremity sheared from its host.

Cracked and forgotten, the harp-shaped branch may be flotsam, but it is not an useless instrument. With her strings missing, she is all the more open to the beyond. She still stands and bathes in sparkles. She still sings.

At the freezing point,

wild west wind and lake spray

mantle the trunk, marzipan on a rich cake.

Thickened ice highlights the outer layer

then darkens to charcoal-purple,

legacy of the long drift from forest

to midnight bonfires on the beach.

As it salves driftwood burns,

ice defines the border of a helmet

whose irregular edges soften the dark wedge,

trace translucent deltas that flow,

river to ocean evolution

from eye of shark’s prow

to fearful mammal below.

As I nestle between lakeside boulders, drifted ice drapes me in a veil. Successive layers of frozen water etch a daguerreotype portrait of arrested lava, once-fluid anger trapped by a season so heavy and cold.

Behind my nape, the thickness of the ice is greater, and swirls of gray-blue shadows entwine in smoky tendrils with hints of ash. From my chin, crystal shards have grown into a beard that flows from the seam where my edges meet the lake’s beach below.

The ghostly poncho that almost completely glazes me has left only an egg-shaped tonsure melted by the sun. In a few weeks, spring’s solar ascent will fully dissolve my obscuring cloak, but for now I am content with the small oval that lies exposed to the elements.

One day soon, an exhausted bird will warm its feet on my crown. Resting after miles of migration, my guest will sit for a spell all hunkered down into its feathers. As it turns its beak towards the water, it will flex its wings to the humming thwack of high winds that scour my quiet skin into forgiving sand.

Unexplained on the wide sidewalk, the door stands upright with the aid of two wooden stands that grip its bottom rail a few scrapes above the absent threshold.

Though the door no longer opens or shuts, the stout pin of one hinge remains, partly encircled by a barrel of the same rusty vintage. Cracked layers of thick white paint on the panels accent the unhinged condition.

Without a hinge to hitch portal to solid frame, access to an interior is lost. For a hinge is the servant to movement. It facilitates welcomes and good-byes. It swings the dancers, defines transitions, provides an exit.

This displaced door reveals the crucial role of hinges, for entrance to beloved places relies on a connecting part so humble that its anatomy is rarely learned: leaf, knuckle, pin, sleeve. Visitors take the obedient swivel of doors for granted, assuming they can handle endless openings, hesitations, closings, and slams.

No longer a barrier between public street and private property, the door’s new context gives passersby the chance to pause and notice its value as an object divorced from human passage. Free from the press of admission and the drama of expulsion, it serves in a different way now.

With its superfluous locks and bolts on display, the unhinged door invites visions of access without traditional keys. For how might humanity evolve if restrictive concepts of ownership become unfastened from their jambs? How might we open ourselves without fear?

At nine o’clock in the morning, serrated leaves by the fence receive the signature of dark steel lines. Dominant chains have eclipsed the delicate veins, and the diamond shapes seem to define the screen of the leaf-surface, imposing rigid patterns on what needs to grow free.

But the fence’s shadow, looping and stamping itself at nine, will be gone by noon, leaving the victorious leaf unchained. After all, it never asked to be cast in a shadow play. Nor did the plant sign a lease with the barricade that straddles its roots. It only desires to rise from the soil in peace.

The tattoo of links is impermanent, for a seemingly solid fence in the morning becomes a shadow of itself as the day wanes. By psychological extension, shifting solar movements can suggest a hopeful metaphor: harmful habits that create barriers to happiness can dissolve like so many shadow-chains. For example, the bruising self-criticism that overshadows confidence and disturbs inner peace may not be the iron-grey shackle of truth we assume.

If distorted thoughts are building a cage one steel rod of fear at a time, consider the power of one question, “Are these thoughts true?” Then take a deep breath and call out chimeras from their hiding places — behind benches of judgment, beneath shaming silences, under tongues that tsk-tsk on the regular — and watch them melt into phantoms with the passage of the sun. Challenge the cruelty that crushes self-love and reject the quelling projections of others. Above all, hold fast to what illuminates, such as visions of leaves that turn fences to trellises, limitless shelters that dapple and shine.

Aging milkweed pods

suggestive of arching spines

crack open their seams,

give Fall those mad fluffy seeds

that hope no longer constrains.