Snow Flood

Winter floods happen on Turtle Creek when melte starts, and ice floes back up and get jammed under the bridge under Cranston Road. Then the water flows out over the wooded floodplain across the river from where my parents used to live.





The water, black with cold, backs up against the banks, and sheets across the buried sandbars. Icebars take their brief place instead, till the dams melt enough to dislodge and pour downstream.





Before the black cold of winter's road fades into summer's reign, before the last grip of latency gives way to the return of life, there is this last conflict between ice, water, and land. The river floods in winter, not only in the autumn rains.



And where it floods, rippling mirrors are made beneath the stalks of winter trees.