The big bass I saw last summer
waits now beneath the ice.
A lazy liquid silence
seals her from the sky.
Has she tried to leap for flies
and found her leap curtailed?
Has she tried to break from the water jail?
Has she smashed against that barrier?
I wait on the beach and watch the gleaming white,
the shining cold crust that holds her in.
It, too, has a beauty that exhilarates
and makes me want to shout for joy.
Come back with the spring thaw.
Make your mighty presence known
in this other precarious universe.
Tell me that you still live.
–Susan Schefflein
3/19/05
Draft © 2005 S. Schefflein All Rights Reserved
1 comment:
It is strange that in the first draft of this poem, the fish was a "he", and then I realized that it had to be a "she" breaking through the glass ceiling.
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