Frozen

It began with something
What, I do not know,
An piece of snow maybe
An icicle perhaps
A piece of frozen water that came
Hurtling down
Falling down from on high
To land in the water
With a plop that echoed hollowly off the frozen walls
And sent ripples flowing away to all corners
Bouncing off the shores and trees and rocks
Until every last ordered ring
Had been turned back into the chaotic calm of the water’s surface

When it began,
How it began,
I cannot say
It simply began
Like a child throwing stones down a well
And we were the water at the bottom
And once it began it did not stop
First one
Then a few
Then a constant hail
Of plop plop plop echoing off the walls
As if to say,
In their hollow resounding voices
“Don’t look up”

Frozen

But look up we did
And looking up we saw something infinite
Something unknowable and yet familiar
Staring up into a sheet of white
We saw our home
We saw the trees and the rocks and the shores
We saw the grass and the moss
We saw every detail of the valley
Buried
Buried once more beneath the Ice
And we shrugged
And still we heard the plop of icicles falling

The echoing plop plop plop continued
Reminding us that every note
Every splash
Every ripple
Could be our last
And still we shrugged

We shrugged because we could do nothing
Because we can do nothing
Because, having seen the end
What purpose was there in a middle
We simply shrugged and carried on
Carried on waiting

Frozen

Once the waiting began
Everything else seemed to simply stop
It seemed the world had simply
Frozen
Waiting
Just like us
Seasons passed, perhaps
But we did not see them
We could not see anything anymore
What was there to see in all the waiting
Just grass
Just trees
Just water
Just the Ice, hanging frozen above
And still we heard the ice and snow
Falling plop plop plop
Into the lake below

We did not know how it would come
Maybe, it would come all at once
A great crashing, cracking, roaring noise
A cascade of snow and ice
Or maybe, it would come quietly
A sudden whoosh of escaping air
Or maybe it would come gradually
A crash here, a splash there
Until it had filled every last crevice
We did not know
And still we heard the echoes of ice into water

Frozen

When it comes
Will we know it?
Standing there shivering in our boots
Gazing up at the ice above
Will we curse? Will we yell?
Will we hear the last of the echoes
Will we see the last of the ripples
Of the very last of the ice
To fall with a great splash into the lake?
Or would we simply be buried
Silent as the snow in the trees
The valley full of glacier and snow
Frozen