V. grandson: wading for icy sunlight

v. grandson: wading for icy sunlight

draft

He is the cream-skinned witness to the aftermath of one more dawn -
a burst of balance; a shock of shoes and socks in a pile
the scaley husks of his grandfather's naked feet
rougher than the sand, older than the water.

Surrounded by the whispered morning spring-ice,
frigid rigid bones crunch down the snowy shade-covered steps
stand on the last stair for all those unsplit seconds
that collapse a life from eternity into a smile.

Splashless, to his knees -
his grandfather wades and waits for him
to understand.

Elderly lips berry into a delightful blue
in a blanket of shivers he steps
through the blistering freeze of mountain lake
into a thousand joyful sparkles
of cold bright light.

Brent -

Stephan,

I like the poem's core but there are some phrases that verge on maudlin: another smile after another warm story, and, through a thousand happy moments. I know those phrases are set up to get jolted by the cold, the seemingly deteriorating mental condition of the grandfather, but they seem a bit too pat and because they aren't grounded in any specificity, they feel hollow.

Some of the word choices too get in the way. The word smashes concerning the stairs I think describes the grandfather's motion down the stairs, but it could also mean the destruction of those stairs. I had a little problem getting that image worked out.

I think we could get more framing from a better title and then you could spend more time working on that central metaphor, the coldness of the day paralleling the other themes of warmth and coldness in the poem.

Brent

Anstey -

Thank you so much Brent. This will really help me slice and dice this. I had set this project aside a while ago, and my frame of mind has been all wrong for it.