The Music of Ice.

A Confounded Letter about continued accidental magic..

 

The pattern of ghosts silent over the trees of the painted Annunciation. Devil forms creating fleeting shadows on a frozen Golgotha hill. A fractured light folded muted into a male form hunting. A composite of black shapes and degenerate seeking darkness. Silent soft lisping, created only for a paused breath and an equally banking vacuum. Diving blunt but forthright into a white rodent winter.

Roaring ice pinpricked with glittering hunting eyes or soft banks of blue snow slumping. Life crisply dying down towards stuttering hearts that long for dreamless sleep. Purple shadows promising a kind of forgotten but still terminal peace.

Slots, forks and pads drawing purposeful lines. Hopping, slinking, curling and freezing. Writing their poorly remembered existence briefly into a hard sharp white season. All hunting lost life and poor health that will eventually be written into a barren bloodless book. All saying I have been here.

Scud flicking purposeful danger and patient prowling coloured contrast. Red pounced punched alarm and heavy breathing missed mist, ice white teeth and lolling blood fire tongue. A look, an anthropomorphic resentment before a sudden fading into a brief seasonal illumination.

Underground creeping feathers from another world that haunt and chill the blood blind. Static, sonambulant furred spheres. Blood cooled and prey listed.

A noticed lack of movement as something surprising in itself. As if it could be bothered. A long term absence of sound that boldly holds and hurts. A cleaness that is as sterile as sheets but less pointed in its direction.  A lack, of life, of light, of love, of warmth and tenderness. Iron taste and struck stark whiteness. An icy collection of spirits from Winters past that compose the blame for all that enter. The tapping of a winter sickle stick to stop growing. The growling of a soft death.The cracking music of ice.

Author's Note

The photograph is mine and is Pystyll Rheader in N Wales.

Reviews

[r. f. jordan]

"Red pounced punched alarm and heavy breathing missed mist, ice white teeth and lolling blood fire tongue. A look, an anthropomorphic resentment before a sudden fading into a brief seasonal illumination."

there is vast complexity to this reading, just as there is to nature, ice, life, and resentment. all of it patterning into ages within from of time. i, especially, adore the title.

[Firestone Feinberg]

An a of wonderful thes. Truth becomes and also here. See This a rock and then a rock too.

[FJ Davis]

Won't waste a lot of time telling you how great you are.
You're great!

[...]

. i loved the picture ... and thought it would be somewhat challenging to do justice to it ... but you've surpassed my expectations ... by light years ... to see these words in that picture and then to transcend the picture in communicating a haunting sadness -- "the growling of a soft death" -- must take tremendous poetic vision and sensitivity ... the kind that inspires readers ... and i am inspired ... the way you speak of "A lack, of life, of light, of love, of warmth and tenderness." is moving beyond measure and overwhelming ... i have known this feeling but you articulate it in a way that gives the reader the relief of reading an expression of a brutal feeling that the reader has experienced but simply not been able to express so intensely ... it's good that we're not alone and share our intense moments of isolation in the real world with our connections in the virtual world ...

[Emily B]

it took too long to get here and I"m sorry for it, your words are always worthy getting to

[Kerry O'Connor]

What a picture! And the writing is equally visual in bringing the winter scene to the reader's imaginative experience. So many phrases and sentences caught my eye:
Diving blunt but forthright into a white rodent winter. (Love the white rodent winter)

And a crash of cymbals at the end:
The tapping of a winter sickle stick to stop growing. The growling of a soft death.The cracking music of ice.

[emmajoy]

You touch language with 'all guns firing' - perhaps a strange way to describe the accuracy of your phrasing, the placing of each word - and yet your writing is so alive, so graphic i'm almost trembling with the cold or, maybe, it's due to the beauty of the following: 'Silent soft lisping, created only for a paused breath and an equally banking vacuum. Diving blunt but forthright into a white rodent winter.'

How can only twenty six letters be so ..

[Donald Meikle]

looks like llann rhyddrr Ken trout pools below yumm
Shivered as I read along

[Ed Hart]

that's some piece of writing...but then, you have to be some kind of man to write it

[roarke]

quite an opus, a symphony even. Rushing water in winter is a thing to behold. The spring ice flows are both beauty and horror all and at once. The melody, harmony and contrapuntal rhythms all orchestrate this wonder, this unique improvisation of nature.
Well spoken.