FRAGILE SKATER

Pain can do it and grief

most certainly will:

create the cracks

on the smooth, unruffled

surface of a mind

where dreams henceforth

will always fear to tread.

But instead she laces tight

her boots of faith, steps out

with sharp blades shining

to skate sleek arabesques

on black ponds of frozen pain,

white wings unfurled to greet

fresh winds of warm compassion.

Sibelius sings of her, this swan

whose luminosity loiters,

making sacred the dark Tuonela waters,

Hell’s rivers which themselves will freeze

before the flame of child-love chills

of which her story dances.

Sorrow’s thin-ice fissures

appear to disappear

when deep darkness melts

to all-seeing light

as, glissando, she sails by.