Escaping Winter’s Prison

Escaping Winter’s Prison

My frozen being was resolved never more to melt nor thaw

not quite content but willing to accept the icy state;

for if the chill would lessen and the flesh begin to melt,

then consciousness would enter and give a face to my fate.

In consequence of actions, my life had been suspended.

I dared not remember nor give permission to my mind

to walk down those frigid passageways where my thoughts might slip

and contemplate September with the leaf still on the vine.

But now the ice is broken by desire I can’t control.

Resolve was not the fortress with impenetrable walls

for there are cracks and crevices giving way to the weight

of the pounding of my hardened heart as it heaves and falls.

My soul’s eyes are open, through narrow slits I now can see,

the vision of early Autumn before the winter frost,

when my heart was still enraptured by slowly changing leaves

caught up in the colors of an affection not yet lost.

“I remember” - these words possess an excruciating pain.

The blast of your cold rejection begins in memory’s trap

with a vision of wind swept trees whose leaves have met their death.

Winter’s passion was not far behind.  I was in its path.

Weakened by the pace of rapid rising temperatures,

the former frozen prison melts into icy river’s flow.

My eyes close in an unengaged form of acquiescence

as I’m carried along aimlessly in the undertow.

Will I drown in the many waters - swirling, churning;

or be contained and swept along until my life’s renewed.

From frozen state to river’s path, it’s not the way I’d choose;

but in the end I think I will again see morning’s dew.

by Karen Marie Crump

Prompt for poem: "O, That this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew."  Hamlet, Act I, scene ii