Blue Ice
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
“Through my picture window I can, sometimes, see Nana watching over her swan. Costumed in agua shoes and water wings, I am still leaping, diving, falling, nearly drowning, and slogging a graceful dance for the diamonds on Indian Lake. A memory I still observe without closing my eyes or exposing myself to hypnotic suggestion. A memory of one tomorrow’s remaking, in hourglass time, leaving no musing undone.”
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
“Blue Ice” is not an attempt to be catchy or complicated. These are just words that give away emotion and substance to the expressions that fall all around “thin ice”. They are just words that apply to what I write about most - relationships of the intimate kind - often those not considerate of our welfare or worth. I have wrestled an almost innate need to rescue and fix people, obeying false commandments and paying penance to procure my own good, and believe I deserve it. What makes it too daring to save ourselves before extending an arm through shards of blue ice, clutching a hand held offering... still beating? I do not want you to think this is a dark book shrilling prophetic doom in contorted faces. It is about rising up on the power of our own self-worth. It is about being anchored by the shouts from lamp lit watch towers, old draw bridges, and warmed stick built shacks - everywhere. If there is obscurity in my poems and stories, it’s so you may see yourself in a few words, a phrase or sentence, and chisel or sculpt what you need to find in one spring fed pocket of air that you are not alone. ... it is in the wrestling with cold swirling waters that we find our bliss, sustain it breath by breath, and round by round. Am I on thin ice? Maybe, but I can see blue a safe distance away. Just words...
About the Author
My back cover starts with the last paragraph from my short story “Indian Lake”. It is hard to write "about" my poems and stories. It is hard to write "about" myself. It is not false vanity but a discomfort lying somewhere between my inner voice and idiosyncrasy (sounds better than oddity or peculiarity). I can tell you that Nana's camp on Indian Lake was very near Lubec, Maine, where I was born. Lubec was once a thriving sardine town on the most northeast coast. It's where the sun rises first and morning memories are vivid, rain or shine. In those days breathing was simply triggered by my lungs need for oxygen. Through my life the drive to come up for air has been more complex like the exchange of carbon. Still, a view of a lake beyond or in a picture window brings goose flesh sticking like a warm wind. I twirled, fell down, and climbed up on a grey-green couch to bow for the colors of the morning. Ripples of diamonds danced for me. Nana danced because I had red hair.