Patricia Spears Jones

Milk Ice

for David Rivard

Driving through fog and storm’s aftermath
milk ice on leaves.  From what breasts
Come this milk?

Swelling are tectonic shifts plunging the snow’s
Volume until a villa is covered from first floor
To roof—thirty people left in an exquisite tomb.

All that white.  No present magic, but shamans once
Roamed these peaks and danced the valleys
In fur and branches listening for those slow shifts

Before the milk ice radiant and a crystalline
Water packs the peaks, the heaviest of breasts.

The plows plod a path away from danger, the road clear
Vehicles move sloth like around the curves descending.

And we hum what could become     lullaby
Fogged drive, bursts of sun, then tree leaves
Heavy with milk ice, a day’s nurture.

For David Rivard

Author: Patricia Spears Jones

Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, anthologist, cultural critic, and activist. She is author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, is widely anthologized and was the recipient of Poets & Writers 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize. She  is an Emeritus Fellow of the Black Earth Institute and organizer of American Poets Congress.

Plume: Issue #98 October 2019