Heart of Ice

Her heart of ice.

-Beats, cracking, thawing and re-freezing

It beats like the cold Stone Mountain she lays in

When the warmth tries to creep into the ice

She hides in the shadow of the mountain

Waiting for the sun to go away

She longs for the gray clouds of winter

Or the stumbling thunderheads of summer

Not wanting to feel the sensation of melting

 

She sits

in her prison of ice

Waiting, rocking, staring

Her eyes glitter with frozen tears

Then one day the warmth came in

It came in its entire fiery wrath with no shelter from the clouds

Day by day she watched the land thirst for the clouds

Not knowing that

everyday her ice cage melts

Dripping, dropping

Giving Sweet life into the land below

 

One day her mountain collapses

Freeing her from her ice palace

She tumbles down from the heavens

And falls into darkness

When the darkness releases her

To her horror she finds herself in the open

She finds white crystals falling around her

Curious, she looks up into the sky

Her eyes focus on a white object in the sky

And amid the silent downpour

a memory finds her.

 

In her mountain prison there once was a she-wolf

The she-wolf  was kind to her and made her pain freeze away like the tears on her face

One night the ice receded, so she and the she-wolf could gaze the white orb without a frigid lens

The girl, curious, asks, “What is that orb?”

The she-wolf smiles and replies, “ That is the Moon”

“The Moon?”

The she-wolf nods

“Why is it up so high?”

The wolf was silent for a moment before replying

“Well just like our mountain the moon is so lonely up there high in the sky

The moon knew that no one would come and see it so

It took a beautiful woman from a village and everyone in the village died so the moon wouldn’t get in trouble, except for one child, the woman’s child, who she desperately begged the moon to let live.

The moon agreed, but only if he could keep the girl on his highest peak in an ice cage where she could never get free and tell the world about what the moon had done

Slowly the women became weaker and weaker because all the food the moon gave her she gave to the child

The moon found out about this and was not happy at all

Why would a woman give all that she had for one simple child?

Did she not love him?

Did he not treat her fairly letting her bask in his nightly glow?

Did he not let her keep her child?

The moon did not understand the meaning of love the woman felt towards the child,

So one day the moon disappeared from the sky appearing to be swallowed by the sun,

But really came down to the mountain peak and argued with the woman.

For days and nights they argued

And seas rose and tore at the villages of man

So they prayed and prayed for the moon to return.

Yet the moon stayed trying to reason with the woman.

But love is not something the moon understands and in an act of blind fury

The moon flung the women from his peak into the crater below

She never screamed as she fell

The moon was sad and cried often making his tears fall on the earth below

He kept the child as a memory of the woman’s kindness

He told his wolf-children to tell of the woman and his beauty, and of her child to always sing their story whenever they saw him.

But the constant lullaby caused the moon’s heart to give up and he fell to the earth below

Creating fire streaks in the sky that embraced with the horizon

And caused the sun the have black streaks across it.

Every night the moon disappears to mourn in darker places only to return again to hear the sweet lullaby and to stare at the mountain. Where a girl once lived frozen in ice”

 

The child stared at the moon above her

And thought….

That she-wolf….

She… looked so familiar

The girl’s head hurt so she put her hand on it

But when she put it in front of her face she found it streaked with red

Another memory

“This…. Is this the fire of the story?

So I should follow the story and lie down? To also disappear?”

The girl looked up at the moon

Her pupils full of the heavens above

Her head hurt even more the fire coming like streaks out of her head

She felt dizzy and tried to get up but fell back down pushed by something cold-yet comforting for it eased her burning

The girl whispered, what a nice story…

 before speaking no more

her body forever embracing the horizon slowly became one with her earthen captor

And became a place where the wolves sing their songs to the sky

And when the wind blows at night during a full moon echoing the songs through the grass whispers

The villagers say you can still hear a small voice saying

"Mommy…Mommy…thank you for the story…"

Author's Note

this is an old poem I found and re-edited. it's not really so much a poem as a story, merely in a poetic structure, please , as always, take with a grain of salt

Reviews

[Rellee]

beautiful

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

mythology threaded to a perfect pitch with an entrancing and subtly placed cautionary tale for the child~ reminds me of the traditional orations of my great grandmother by the summer fires at Dehera'~

[Shin]

Speechless, just speechless, it was very deep, rich with even the smallest detail, everything was just so... deep like I said before, I really can't express how well it's written.

[Dinesh Sairam]

A splendid prose poem. I was like, nearly obsessed with the imagery that was forecasted in the first few stanzas.

"Beats, cracking, thawing and re-freezing
It beats like the cold Stone Mountain she lays in
When the warmth tries to creep into the ice
She hides in the shadow of the mountain
Waiting for the sun to go away"

I had to say, I first thought this was about the concrete heart of the female kind in general. But as I can see, you did otherwise. But, truly, the imagery is splendid.

"Day by day she watched the land thirst for the clouds
Not knowing that
everyday her ice cage melts
Dripping, dropping
Giving Sweet life into the land below"

You depict an 'Angel-like' (Kinda lonesome anyways, wait, are angels always lonely?) person. Who doesn't wanna escape from her cage, but the cage melts and 'gives sweet life' to the land below. Nice usage of words there.

The third stanza wasn't as emotive as the first two. But well, it's nice. And since it's the 'connecting' stanza, nothing could be done about it ;)

The story of the wolf and moon, I knew it only after 'X-men origins : The Wolverine', lol. It's a nice little, poetic story which expresses the pain of separation and angst.

The ending again, was nothing related to poetry.. (Um, Sorry). It was a nice description how a small girl takes and think about a story. To some extent, how much a fantasy story affects a small girl and makes her think it was real.

A wondrous poem. If the words before the story part are yours, then well done. If they weren't yours, I've got nothing to say really.. :-|

Keep writing.