Under The Ice

This is a poem I wrote a couple years back and the namesake of this site. It won an honorable mention in the nation-wide Potato Hill poetry contest.

UNDER THE ICE

The back of my mind has the thoughts I don’t think about and others I don’t understand.
It feels hard but hollow
like a creek that’s frozen on top but still
making life underneath. The ice
is the
ominous thoughts
that first come up when I look at the back of my mind.
The river is all the
things I
don’t understand and
those that
were too great
for me to grasp. If I can break the ice-fear with
my patience,
I can use my reward. The light is dim and the air warm
under the ice. It smells like the absence of a smell
in a forgotten dream and cork grease and jazzy reeds and tennis
and soccer
balls and basketballs and baseballs. It sounds like mine
and John
Coltrane’s saxes and pride and
Math that softly stings
and defeat from people
younger than me and the voices and the breathing
of the people that I
regret
not
helping.