Sometimes, when you are lucky, a poem slams into you. Like this…

THE EDGE OF MANSFIELD

It was in the ice crystals. The clouds that swirled over me had ice crystals in them. Someone said they were from the hurricane that lighted candles in New Orleans and sizzled wires in Queens. Ida, they called her. A short name for a long storm. Now she was here spinning herself out above Vermont, rushing up the side of its highest peak, flash freezing me with ice in August. A baptism of frozen water and clouds. Thank God. I don’t thank Him often. But thank god for an air cold enough and an edge high enough to spark a fire inside me.  Burn away the longing, singe the lust, obliterate the patience of waiting. Each crystal hissed on my skin, accelerated the rage that used to be an endless kiss. Odd, isn’t it? This temperature inversion. A volcano under a blizzard. A scorched hole in the frost. The air was blind with clouds but the ice crystals held me tethered to the edge. There was no danger of suicide. I was finally burned clear of you.

The remnants of Ida above Vermont