Let our ice melt at last
after this long and killing winter.
Let the crooked snags
drip in the mouths 
of our emptiest caves

and burble like doves in the light
of a promising spring; meltwater,
call the rains into your rush,
uncloud the boundless sky,
stripe the mountainsides!

Softening paws of snow, 
slip from windfalls 
and go clear in the torrent.

Freshets of turquoise,
wing over the blinding cliff
and throw your sheets to the wind
as you fall toward the blackness
of deeper waters.

Let the ice slough 
from the hedge thorns
and heap at roadside
in shattered imbrications. 

Bruised ditches, 
heal. Razors of glazed soil 
yield to our stumbling, 
cradle us in mud.

Slate-roofed cathedrals, 
weep with melting; 
let the rivulets wash 
your towering windows 
and pummel the furrows
beneath your eaves.
Let them plant the seedshine 
along your stones
that grow the colors 
of Yahweh’s bow. 

Fill the air with kisses. 
Thaw the lump of wine.
Let our ministers of enmity
melt their hearts in this grand
transubstantiation 
of ice.

Call in our empire builders 
to watch as so much ice 
goes out to sea. Let the floes 
clear the continental shelf:
a bleached plain of sun-softened slopes 
gathering and going, creaking and breaking,
shouldering over like whales.

Sea of night skies–from wavecaps
 to Andromeda–draw it all

deep, beyond the gloom
of lurid rifts

bear it true to the land of foes 
we once imagined, to a shore
where women and men, brutalized,
unbeaten, stagger down burnt rocks
and limp across the smoking sands—
so many survivors gathered at
the edge of ruin.
 
See them squat near the surf,
sheltering their children 
as a mystifying foam sweeps 
in and speaks to their toes:
the sibilance of a heart 
newly melted, sighs
that suffer to send the sounds 
of love’s oldest articulations,
the hiss of regenerate ice.

Story behind the poem: I wrote this as an expression of hope and of healing, following the federal government's Operation Metro Surge (Winter, 2026). That surge involved two months of cruel and illegal attacks on Minnesota immigrants and the people who support them. Two protectors--Renee Good and Alex Pretti--were murdered while lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights. During the height of the operation, I witnessed firsthand a city coming together to selflessly defend their imperiled neighbors and oppose acts of unqualified evil. With gratitude, I was able to see what a community can expect when a great resolve is born into the world from the energy of love.

Photo: author. Protest at the Whipple Detention Center, January, 2026