Under the Ice

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Under the Ice

Like Coleridge, I waltz

on ice. And watch my shadow 

on the water below. Knowing that

if the ice were not there

I'd drown. Half willing it.

In my cord jacket

and neat cravat, I keep

returning to the one spot.

How long, to cut

a perfect circle out?

Something in me

rejects the notion.

The arc is never complete.

My figures-of-eight

almost, not quite, meet.

Was Raeburn's skating parson

a man of God, poised

impeccably on the brink;

or his bland stare

no more than a decorous front?

If I could keep my cool

like that. Gazing straight ahead,

not at my feet. Giving

no sign of knowing

how deep the water, how thin the ice.

Behind that, the other

question: whether the real you

pirouettes in space

or beckons from under the ice

for me to come through.

Stewart Conn

Similar to my post of December 14, 2016 (The Midnight Skaters by Edmund Blunden), this skater is also acutely aware of how close Death is. He almost courts it - except he can't quite, he's a little too nervous, too superstitious perhaps. He wants to be more "cool", like the skating parson in the painting by Raeburn, but he's not sure that guy isn't posing, pretending not to care about the risks he's taking. The last stanza is the one that clinches it. He's not even sure if he's himself, or if the shadow skating on the other side of the ice is him. Is life is that precarious, that uncertain - it may end abruptly and without us knowing if we're even truly ourselves? God forbid. But what a wonderful way to pose the question.