It's too late
for thinking twice
when your feet have found
the thinnest ice
where the wine sweet shine
of spring's first thaw
has loosened
winter's grinding jaw.
It's too late
for turning back
once you've heard
that sharp, clean CRACK
and far too late
for wondering then
just how deep
and cold the swim.
55 words for Kerry at Real Toads
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Saturday, October 3, 2015
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About Me
- Maude Lynn
- Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. ---Flannery O'Connor
18 comments:
O fate, O ice, only before we venture can we think twice. This pertains to MANY situations. Thawing resolve and morality are tricky.
I think I like best the mention of spring, usually a symbol of optimism and hope in the new growth of life, being the cause of the ice's frailty. It speaks of folly in blind optimism with no cause.
Ha. I have broken ice to swim. (One wouldn't actually call it swimming.) It is like this poem. (But not perhaps so well done.) k.
Ha. I have broken ice to swim. (One wouldn't actually call it swimming.) It is like this poem. (But not perhaps so well done.) k.
There are words of wisdom and warning here
Another wonderful write! (Albeit also a warning.)
Amazing as always...Politically, I feel we are all walking on thin ice.
I have been lucky enough never to break that ice.. But I guess there is less gain if you never venture out. You make Mongolia for winter though..
The last line in each stanza is especially delicious.
This is a brilliant metaphor - i felt like i was out on that ice, waiting or the first crack to appear.
This must. be. published.
Really, no one does this as well as you do, MZ. The package is a ticking time bomb, neatly tied in red ribbon on the subway seat beside us. An apposite metaphor of a step too far that must be taken, even if it brings us as close to death as lip to kiss.
Weird, this was the vibe I started with, at that cracking immanent precipice of the last wrong step. Something about the song started me there. I didn't have the brains to write it the way you did here.
I like the rhyme and meter here, but think you've gone above and beyond in the slippery feel of some of these syllables. Example: It's too late for thinking twice when your feet have found the thinnest ice." that line slips nicely when read outlaid, giving a meta-feel. Well done and viva la
Yikes ! I shivered. Well done.
ZQ
superb and suspensful ~
Oh, man! A cautionary tale. Excellent
I think you've just described swimming in Northern Michigan come June :) No, but close. This is so awesome... "wine sweet shine" - oh, that first touch of sun and LIGHT when I lived up north after a long cloudy winter. I love living in the south where the sun is always out...
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