Winter, Maine: Late

Winter, Maine: Late

1800’s: Getting the Job: Ice Harvesting

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

                                                           

                                                Emily Dickinson

                                                “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –“

It’s only after the first day he’ll dream

of cold peaveys and picks,

the spiky cleated shoes his grandfather screwed

into the hooves of their two draft horses,

the stiff prick in the palm of his hand

when the leg jumped, the oooooo and coooo

while the bruise pooled in his wrist, how

the lung of cold hung above the barn—and all

seemed calm on the pond:  little wind

and the ice near two feet thick.

It’s slippery, his father’d said.  It’s not

my Da’s Irish ooze.  In his head: You’ve come for this:

for knees to freeze and bleed.  Don’t mourn that boy

friend who skated on ponds like these before he

fell through and no one knew until spring

he hadn’t just run off. Boys did that. Run

off.  So

once you pull that saw, once that hundred, sometimes three

hundred pounds float rough and square,

set free from their freak sleep be careful

boyoo.  Only last week behind the shed

a man from down river, feet wet, said just a minute

I’ll be just a minute and turned, went out

back and slipped and quiet as that ice he froze… 

toes, nose… so boyoo

keep free of open water.  And maybe this year

tend Ben and Blu, walk alongside on the solid

ground when they draw the first slice-lines.