Ice House

by Michael Brimbau

First published in January/February, 2008, Volume 5, Issue 1, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.

Ice castle partitions

speak by a placid shore

with no king to deliver

growing trees at its core

now dry and parched

holding ice no more

by a New England loch

this land between lakes

of speckled glass granite

in the sun left to bake

now nothing to give

and nothing to take

outside this woodland

a world paved ground

denizens of ignorance

where no essence is found

history dies

in this once ancient town

thus bohemian fathers

with frozen block minds

by acuity which melts

the ages behind

of the small and the blind

to those left to time

having no reverence for quest

or vision of kind.