THE ICE
:“What are you dreaming of?”
:“The ice.”
:“But you are on the ice.”
:“I am thinking of the ice I will be on.”
:“We are standing on the ice right now,
facing each other. We are on the ice
touching lips, we are squinting out
at sails that move as if on a track.”
:“I only know that we have not fallen through.”
:“What are you dreaming of?”
:“The ice.”
:“But you just dreamt of ice.”
:“That was a different ice. This time we
are indoors. The light is blue in that
underwater way. The sadness is dimmed,
and at the end of the day, you are fetching.”
“What are we looking for?”
:“I can’t remember.”
:“What are you dreaming of?”
:“The ice.”
:“But we are indoors. Blue light, et cetera.”
:“No, we are standing at the edge where
the ice breaks against the sand, triumphant.”
:“Breaks what?”
:“Exactly.”
:“Where will we go when it splits in two?”
:“When what splits?”
:“The way I know all of your et ceteras exactly.
And the mornings when we track the orange
light from under blankets, watch strings
of dust sway in the ceiling’s breeze.”
:“To the ice. I will be in the middle
of the lake, out past the barriers, and you
can pull me back to shore.”
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Oliver Bendorf lives on an isthmus in Madison, Wisconsin, where the ice cover on the lakes is every year. His poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Best New Poets 2012, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Redivider, The Volta, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Iowa City, Iowa, he is currently the Martha Meier-Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellow in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he edits Devil’s Lake.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
this feeling of standing on ice and feeling the warmth of love. Beautiful poem Bendorf.
I am impressed by the way the poem skates … on thin ice.
Brilliant Poem.