#eramosa

to sit by the edge, admiring the folds of ice shelves hardened after smashing into one another, now slowly disintegrating, one shelf loosed up river, let to flow downstream and grate and pummel, grab and pound the ice that remains.. it is a haunting sound. as the left overs hang limply, their surface is taught. a sizable snare reverberating the thump and grind out into the forest.

to melt by this edge into the thawing topsoil, with my back to an uncomfortably narrow buckthorn, Rhamnus cathartica, and sitting on top of my backpack, with legs outstretched, monocular in hand, watching the ice go by... this is the woodland spirit singing. the rivers edge keening, a shedding of skins and making bare once more all the thawing quiet life slowly stretching below.

there were drum rolls, cymbal crashes, bassy bowed notes riding over cello strings. timpani and violence of crushed ice smashing into shore. tectonic plates shifting, giving way and tumbling submerged in the water, though bouying several metres past where i watch, tipping upward slightly, just enough to tag the low loving branches of the eastern white cedars, Thuja occidentalis, as the sheets crumble and fade to the shallow but dark frigid waters.

there was bird sound across the river, but i'm not certain who. my guess was black capped chickadee, Poecile atricapillus, but i couldn't be sure. i had the idea that at least a small pack, perhaps six or eight were flitting around the cedars watching the same sheets go down. they sang the treble, while ice carried the low end.