CROSSING THE RIVER ON THIN ICE

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

the beavers have chewed down to pencil stubs,

I remember Walter de la Mare’s imperative

about treading softly,

for you tread on my dreams,

and take great care not to wake anyone up

grasping stray branches I use

like crutches, walking sticks, and canes

as I place each foot down gently and deliberately

crossing a minefield covered in snow

to make absolutely sure that I don’t.

Because if you don’t let things dream

of whatever they’re dreaming about,

and walk softly whenever you’ve got

a big stick in your hand

like a dead tree trying to help you

get a leg up on crossing it like a threshold,

it could be you that wakes up to the nightmare

on the nasty side of Walter de la Mare.

The leaves claw at the ice-glazed snow

like bats at a glass-blown window,

frozen waves of a tide on the moon

flexing the neck muscles of a maneless horse,

or even more bizarrely

because life is more surrealistic

in the deep end

than it is sane in the shallows,

the mummified feet of Canada geese

who’ve lost their footing in the snow.

Brush wolves off in the distance

baiting the farmyard dogs

to howl at the end of their leashes

like the domesticated pets

that became of the dogs of war,

commissionaires at the door,

or come out and be torn to pieces

like the calves and the lambs

and those who fell for the ruse

and wandered out alone

and had their necks broken

for taking their instincts off the chain

to be something they weren’t anymore.

For accepting the challenge

of their old wild adversarial selves

like the French at Agincourt

only to be found in the fall

like the skeleton of a favourite dog

in hunting season south of Highway 7

when the white-tailed deer

are culled by the locals

to keep the population down

and the brush wolves at a distance

looking on with a hard winter ahead

in their strategic hearts

and pups to feed

learning from their persecutors

how to the steal the farm back

one sheep, one cat,

one calf, one chicken,

one foolish dog off its turf at a time.

As I am with a National Geographic

sixty millimetre refracting telescope

strapped to my back like the easel

I used to bring here in the summer,

as if I were out to cull the stars of Orion

by myself in a wild place

in the middle of the night

in a clearing in the woods

where the wolves watched what I painted

fascinated, warily tolerant, and sated

without treading on my dreams

and waking me up to the danger I was in

if they hadn’t recognized

the same voice that called to me

called to them like the sorceress

of a moonlit summer night

and in the winter,

the spell-binding stars

of a wizard of ice

that indentured us all

wolf, human, dog, deer

river, birch, hill, and telescope alike

to the crazy wisdom of an essential insight

that makes anyone whose blood

has ever risked running

like paint with the wolves,

or dared being driven into

deeper snow like a telescope at bay

or descended into a dangerous darkness

to clarify a wolf’s-eye view

of the millions of grazing stars

moving slowly across the heavens,

an apprentice of the light for life

when life isn’t a chore on the farm

you’ve been brought up to endure

securing a board on a barn door

to keep it shut like your mouth

when you know you should

but a calling you can’t ignore

to risk it all on thin ice

like Hannibal or Lao Tzu

crossing the Alps

like elephants in the dark

with one throw

of the constellations

that bite into the dice down to the bone

just to see what you’re made of

when you’re on your own

far from home

and there’s lots to be afraid of.

PATRICK WHITE