Frozen River

The thick white frosting
On your brittle surface
Insulates you from winter
Like an eiderdown of snow,
And the hard grey crust
On your ragged shore
Is as dense as lead,
But you are not as secret
As you think–
I hear you sliding beneath me,
Trapped like an animal
In the prison of winter,
But refusing to hibernate;
Buried alive in a coffin of ice,
Gasping for breath
Under its heavy lid.
I feel you coursing below me,
Sneaking under the surface
Like a liquid spy,
Dark and slippery as lava.
But here and there you show
In brilliant metallic slivers
Flashing like tiny rivers
Along your cracks,
And I feel your desperate running–
Running toward spring–
To hatch from your silver shell
Into a channel of molten light.