Today, on and in the river, I saw variations on the theme of freezing, an improvisation by ice. Yesterday's clear central passage bottle-necked in the night, backing up the flow of slushy stuff into a scalloped stretch of icy ridge.
The clearer, older, ice nearer the right bank revealed a scattering of oak leaves trapped within. Under other ice could be seen leaves moving in the spectral medium created by the dimming hard surface. Small masses of ice fragments moved beneath the surface too, so that the river, shallow as it was, displayed different planes of activity. First, the fixed icy surface. Below, a level filled with frozen moving shapes. Further down the rocks at the bottom. Near the right bank, free water flowed atop the ice: another plane, above the surface.
The sight of flowing water contained by ice brings to mind the human bloodstream. Unless torn, it is visible only through the presence of a few near surface veins and capillaries, yet constantly pulsing throughout our lives. Like blood in the body, the river bears the stuff of life for the Earth. Even in winter, on it flows, part of the near cosmic cycle of water poured onto the land, then pulled back to the sky. The ice shapes a caesura in the process, a rest in the singing round of vapor, cloud, rain, river and sea.
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