Inside me

At the shore of the frozen lake

They are still talking.

We shouted, shouted,

Waved our dim lanterns over the snow.

I feel him riding through the darkness over the ice.

They say

The centre is a deep unfreezing maw.

Beneath the horse the ice mumbles and moans.

The hag scratches and suspects.

Through her vague snow of remembered disappointments

She curses him laughing in a warm room up the shore.

Won't he go 'round? the boy began.

Eyes like frozen lakes with dark centres

Stopped him short.

This is one

Of many many villages

Snowed apart around a frozen lake.

In the spring

Gone are ice, ice village, eye-like frozen lake.

And ice riders riding over the ice through the dark.

It is winter,

I listen into the wind

For hooves, for a splash, for a shout.