The Second Iceage Poem by Louie Vizcarra

The second ice age started long after
My forest was washed away
first by my tears and then by the floods.
After the floods came the fire
And while the remnants burned in flames
Frost the Bitter sat on top of the globe and blew
And the second ice age descended like a mad tsunami
on the charred skeletons of the forest.

Long ago during the floods my left eye
watched the disaster of the forest washed away in the flood
while my right saw another-
Strawberry Swing going down as well.
First was the flower vase you threw against the wall,
then the torn painting, but
The funeral song was almost too much.
Glass crunched under your rainbow shoes and
'I love you' echoed off the mountains and trees of the forest
While Strawberry Swing sunk like the titanic.
While these two disasters changed the shape of my world
I at first rushed to save the final pieces
but then I left and
I sat on a faraway bridge and sung a different song.

I closed my mouth and sighed in tired resignation
as Frost reached down from the top of the earth
and savagely seized me by my skull.
A finger pierced each eye socket
And the goblin lifted me up 50 feet off the ground
he cackled while deadly cold advanced like crusaders.
And so began the second ice age.

While we were frozen statues in deadly cold
(myself hanging by fingers in each eye socket)
you apathetically witnessed our second demise as you did the first-
from far away on your green shore.
I wriggled free from the goblin, and hardening my face
I bent down my head and defiantly charged against the cold
Just as I did when I sped past you in the burning forest
As you offered me your hand full of wildflowers.

I thought of revisiting the old fabled forest and seaside
on which we built our forts and sandcastles
but as the wandering mists of Strawberry Swing followed me tirelessly
peeking around bushes and another pretty face
giggling and disappearing as I turned to look
I decided even the top of the world, which offered a distant view
was too close for me.

Through the glass of frozen lakes I saw my shoes
and my face looking back up at me.
Smiling slightly,
I charged ahead
and instead of stopping to pick them up
I made sure to step on the pieces of
Strawberry Swing that I saw scattered along the way
and promised myself the next time your ghost
whispered I love you and
offered a hand full of wildflowers
I would show them the same fate of Strawberry Swing.