Cutting-Pond

And [fearing] that all other wynters would prove like the first, the company by no means would stay any longer in the country.

—William Strachey, The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, 1612

Back behind Popham:mud too innocently plodding

to reach sea. A vegetable lapof water once held in winter

the whole town's next-summer's edible ice.

Saw-sounds at the sitekept deer away, and the egg-

spiced mouths of weasels,the sickness that could be hidden

in the quickest things, a sprue gutor fever we hoped not to know.

Denying these small beastsour source. Pond by rain fattened,

made good by cold for slivering.White crags of ice

fricatively bearded,sleigh bluster, days of chop—

every year a dozen fingerssmashed or bent wrong.

And for what? For pleasure in summerto remember near-torture

as a thing gone through, chippedto baby eye-teeth, pitchered

and neuter with lemons and sugar.Bad winter, good ice: obvious as apples

best in drought, or lovein remove: fate hates an easy time,

is how it seems. Turnsitself about. The baby blue,

slap it up, gulp blue sky, chasethe blueing blood out.

That squinty, chapped world-substanceopposing matching, letting nothing

rest unswitched,unshook.

Here now I see it flummoxedthis one moment: ice only creeping

the pond edge, too warmthis year to hold. Nothing won

by saw shriek lorded home.This the new unseen sightless gash:

this knowing there will be trials,never again at appointed times.