Spring Breaking

This poem was inspired by my wife's visit to her sister in Maine, one spring, told to me one morning at breakfast.

SPRING BREAKING
by Charles Coté

Springtime freeze and thaw in the state of Maine meant
skating over black cracks in ice that moaned
an eerie strain on the lake.
    It followed my edges.

Sometimes I’d see green-frozen bubbles;
think a leviathan had come to life,
yawning hungry for me after all that time
    asleep on the lake.

I imagined loose chunks of ice; would I fall
headlong over these tombs to an icy grave?
I looked through the glaze and saw what was thawing:
    the dreams of my lake life.

(Published in Blueline, Volume XVIII, 1997)