The Glacier - John Grey

It's a hundred feet thick of silence, 

of slowly moving stillness,

unbothered by the roar, titanic splash, 

where it caves in chilly bay water.

I sit for hours on a boat deck 

as the liner glides ever closer,

nudging aside small bergs with

a sound like a feather pillow being punched.

Sun nibbles at the bright blue flanks, 

melts and strips, glitters in the overhangs.

Brine eats away from below,

slowly swallowing blocks of floating ice.

Sun, glacier, sea - all exert the force

of what they are. My eyes are so meager.

I'm here for your sake. I travel to earth's ends 

because its beginnings were so close, no narrow,

a lake for skating, lovers skimming 

the flakes of snow in dainty figure eights.

I never knew the ice as such a massive, 

living thing, indomitable, dramatic,

carving a path across a vast spread of landscape 

with such unthinking obliteration.

I remember our life together -

so delicately designed, so gently powered.

And here - all is massive, unending.

But it lacks reflection. Maybe that's where I come in.

Originally published by the Chaffey Review, October 2007

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Abbey. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone and Willow Review.