Thoreau and Thawing

by Les

This morning I opened the freezer
to spring thaw, broken ice plates
fallen on the ledge. (Their crash
sounding like furniture
toppling over next door.)
I knew last night’s defrosting
has done its work,

this deliberate wait for icicles,
tears wrung from the hours,
a quality of concentration
distilled from the effortless:
ice cubes webbed by cracks
neural as lightning, presage
to thunder. The first time

I had read Thoreau, I knew
I had to see Walden for myself,
scrape the melting bracken
with the heels of my boots
on the still-frozen sandy shore.
Open his book, open a freezer
to Language’s detritus,

accumulated silt of Nature’s
self-observation: The genius
of a leaf preserving itself in snow.
I didn’t know until this morning
I would return, again and again,
to a form that always tries
to equal a hidden force

shattering the ice.

© Noelle Leslie dela Cruz