Arrested Motion

I had come to watch silver minnows

darting and defying winter

in a backwater channel of the creek

where ice never forms,

where algae is an evergreen too,

living beyond its means

on geothermal credit, just enough

to keep its head above freezing

and the minnows in business

year round.

I was leaning and looking

from the shore of an island rising

between the ice capped creek

to the north and this southward ribbon

of unseasonal spring,

when a dissonant glint of chrome

flashed from the opposite bank

under a thatched roof of willow and snow,

where only frozen mud should be.

After my eyes adjusted

to shapes and lines foreign to

the water-formed world

I found it in the shadows—

the vintage handle of a car door, no—

the rusted door too,

or, wait—a whole car

headed east in arrested motion

underground, mostly.

I could almost see a skeleton’s elbow

resting out the window on a summer evening,

his wrist bending outward to flick the ash

from a glowing Marlboro. I could

almost hear the AM radio dial

spinning in his woman's fingers, 

searching for new stations

in the far night,

out where thermal plumes

of redemption are hot enough to 
unfreeze time.