I have come to river’s edge to spend a few moments letting go of the day’s busyness, to try to quiet my scattered thoughts and worries. I sit on the wind swept trunk of an uprooted tree. An overnight freeze has sent hundreds of small rafts of ice into the river and I watch as they flow down the current, pass under the bridge and disappear around the snow-crusted sandbar.  Slowly my thoughts drift away with them and I’m not aware of the cold seeping into my clothes as I sit entranced by the flotilla that appears like clouds scuttling through the reflected sky of water. 

But the gathering of ice in an eddy near the shore draws me back.  One by one frozen chunks are pulled out of the main current and swirl together, beginning to spin as they are sucked into the scour hole. As one after another attaches itself to the outer edges they coalesce and I am caught up in the growing crystalline spiral. It feels like magic, the way all the pieces are coming together, as if I am on the verge of a marvelous discovery. 

But then the revolving circle begins to scrape along the rocks in the shallower water. The grinding sound gets louder as the blue water between the ice and the bank gets thinner and thinner until the ice sheet suddenly catches up on the shore and begins to shudder.  The spinning slows, then stops as the ice distends and distorts, frozen in place and all that is left is a frigid spit. The free floating rafts of ice slip past to continue their journey downriver and I try to loose myself and drift downstream again with them, but now I am distracted by the cold and the spell is broken.