Crossing The River On Thin Ice
Crossing the river on thin ice, the next step
the beginning, and the one after that
the end and the whole of the rest of your life.
I’m listening for cracks in a mirror.
I’m jumping from rock to rock
like prophetic skulls
cobbling the yellow brick road
with glacial i.e.d.s
playing chess with my nerves
like the wicked witch of the east
laying bets against my afterlife
should I break through
and be swept under
to look at the stars as I used to do
on summer nights flat on my back
when I was young
only to find, older, I still do,
through a broken window in a palace of ice
like an acid flashback of my whole life
seen through an ice-age cataract
over my third eye
like flowers in the sky
strewn over the dangerous path I took
to get to the other side.
As I do. With the uncanny feeling
I’ve been mountain climbing on the moon.
I can trust the river like an instinct.
It’s purging to risk now and again
falling through something
to get to the other side of it
as if life had given you a pass
and you think, maybe, just maybe
it wanted you here for something
that would be made abundantly clear later
though for now, it’s more than enough
to feel the glee
of having gotten away with something
like the simple bliss of just being alive
to celebrate your victory against the odds.
But it’s crucial not to gloat.
Gloating makes you arrogant.
Arrogance makes you stupid.
Stupid makes a mistake.
And the river, like a country road,
will teach you to respect its leniency
on the way back without any.
So for the next half mile
through the intermittent field hospitals
of the birch groves overwhelmed
by the number of the fallen amputees
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poem by Patrick White
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