Drinking the Silence

Blue Wing

She climbed the mountain many times with her fatherbut never when the brook made no soundbeneath its crust of ice, never when oakscreaked like skeletons picked clean by winter storms.

Today her father waits beside his pickupon the logging road below. She kneels in snowprinted only by crows, tugs a blue wingfrom a nylon cocoon, tightens tendons to aluminum bones.

On a granite cornice she holds up a tubelike a champagne glass—not to toast the windbut to measure the force of what's coming.Harnessed to her new body, she jumps

into nothing but the valley's erratic breath,her heart shivering like the heart of the Aztec girlbefore she plunged from a temple's summit.Buoyed up by what she knows will let her down,

she angles back and forth in her own good time,feeling her way through the invisiblecrosswinds, her green gogglestinting trees to a different season.

Grass rolls down white slopes like drumbeats.A blues riff hums through cords by her head.In no time her shadow passes over her fatherwaving binoculars by his truck.

In no time she shudders feet-first into a snowdrift,folds up her blue wing, hobbles backto her father with nothing more to givethan frozen tears and a mouthful of song.

Maine Ice

                 —In memoriam George Garrett

Winters we have these days aren't as coldas they used to be. Ice on the lake is thinnerthan when my Uncle Lester pulled skaterson ropes behind his tin lizzie. Now I listenfor telltale quakes at night to let me knowwhen it's strong enough to support a Jeep.

The last time my husband, Burt, cut ice,we hadn't heard a crack or boom for weeks.Burt, I swear, was more pigheadedthan a pig. He shoved aside a plate of troutI'd cooked and said he was going outwith his saw. I told him to finish eating."There's no ice stacked in the icehouse," he said."This'll be the last week I can drive the truckacross the lake before the ice gets weak.If I don't pack the icehouse now, we're sunk."

That really ticked me off. "You know full wellI'm sick of all your talk of climate gloom.Each year our guests return to fish the lakefor trout. Each year you say they won't come backagain. Why?" I looked straight at his eyes,hoping he'd back down. "The lake's shallowand warming up," he said. "Bass and othertrash fish are moving in. The trout are dying off."When Burt got stuck in a mood, arguingwas like trying to break ice with toothpicks.So I let him hitch his trailer to the truck, listened for the clank of the old thing on the trailto the dock where our summer guests launch canoes.

Then I heard the sputter of his chainsawcutting ice, the thud of blocks on the trailer.Twice he drove to the icehouse. I don't knowwhat happened next. I don't think he knew either.

It was a good thing he didn't drive out too far.If he had, our guests would still be telling jokesabout bass swimming through his Ford.Or they wouldn't because he'd be dead,and I'd be somewhere else. He barely saidanything to me that night he crashed through ice.He just stripped, hung up his soaked clothesby the stove, and climbed into bed.

Later I found him staring at the moonlitice. "It's burning," he said. "Look—the goddamn ice is burning, and there's nothingyou or I or God can do. We're sunkthis time. We're truly sunk. I swear it's timewe left this place for good." I didn't saya word. I just groaned and went back to sleep.

The truck was our only car, so we had to callour closest neighbor, twenty miles away...