Black ice is prowling the streets, knowing the asphalt
in the way I think I’ll someday I know my own bones.
The icy roads have brought my bus to an unhappy halt
and the passengers chorus complaints in brassy tones,
but I like black ice: it pretends to be water and
it is rare, among the untouched inanimate, to find
something so apparently dissatisfied with itself. Sand
doesn’t yearn to be steel or sapphire — only beach. Mind
the black ice. Mind anything that’s colder than it looks,
because however it looks you’re the one who’s wrong.
In the very end it won’t be the ice waking up with a broken foot.
So listen; don’t touch, don’t step. Black ice sings her song:
I am not yours, not wet, not sound, not safe, not soft — not now.
My nature never lived in eyes, but here, in frozen ground.