The pond

Around the edge lace filigree shatters
at the slightest touch, shards scattering
like broken glass, but farther out the ice
is thick, immobilized by Arctic cold,
the weight of water, locked down,
trapped, mute as stone, the weight of
grief, immutable, the weight of fear,
impaled on the frigid air. Yet, even now,
beneath our sight, what was, and is, will
always be, the dearest freshness deep
down things where minnows glide and
water sings, the aquifer from which
life springs.