Poems by Terry Blackhawk

Ice Music

by Terry Blackhawk

From Canary Spring 2020

Now a resident of Connecticut, for many years Terry lived and wrote not far from the Detroit River (in fact a strait--Detroit in French--connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie) and its beautiful refuge on the city’s Belle Isle. The area is home to the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and is at the intersection of the Atlantic and Mississippi migratory flyways.

ice melt ice lace ice
breaking up upstream
coming down from up
north in variegated
quilts of floes
no
instant’s act
this
crumbling
an entire
season sends broken
continents our way
once-miles-wide chunks break
and bob or push up
against the shore
in spun sugar turrets
they rise fall glistening
dissolving ice lace
ice music I seem
to hear a tremolo
in the trees
but it’s March no leaves
no breeze just the score
for the scene
before me silvery
glissandos rising
from a streaming swarm
of glinting
creatures herded
by the current
in a living touching
clinking singing surge