K. Lee Mock, Skim (oil on canvas )
I didn’t know it was supposed to be
this bad, I say of the ice storm.
I’m thinking of the night
that surrounds a house on the coast,
of how the ferocious-sounding sea
carries on crashing while humans look out
and see nothing, how all they perceive are
the sounds of the world changing
wave by wave without them.
Last night the world changed
raindrop by raindrop
and sounded like any rain except
for an occasional tinny noise
as the glass hardened over our cars,
our power lines, our oak trees.
As the roads became
impassable, slick rivers.
I didn’t know we were supposed to
become so entirely stranded.
Thus the feeling as I wake
and see a new kind of light
out the window, a new heavy shine
over everything. This sense that
we’ve lived through something mighty
without being afraid or even
aware. All night with you next to me,
the world was becoming
a diamond. And somewhere else
an inlet formed, and all the listenings
in the end were poor guesses, weak
theories of what that thunderous a tide
could’ve carried away.