A story of when the ice detached and the people floated away ~ with audio

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr

Poetics: travels in the wild, the prompt from Sarah at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, offers seven lines from “Surfacing,” a book of essays exploring the natural world and different histories by Kathleen Jamie, with one of those lines to be used as the title of a poem.

Those lines are:
• Travelling in the wilderness
• She said if a red fox had crossed somewhere, that area was safe
• They say only the south wind flattens grass
• We are teachers to our grandchildren
• Lead dogs are very smart
• Squirrel hunting in the mountains
• A story of when the ice detached and the people floated away

Let’s call my response a stream of consciousness.


 

A story of when the ice detached
and the people floated away

Fear not, for this is merely a matter of conjecture and prognostication,
one that could come to pass given the habits and tendencies
of people when restrictions are placed upon them,
such as food rationing and curfews meant to restrict movement
that might make them the targets of an enemy during a time of war.

Not that that would ever happen or be willingly accepted
by a populace as a matter of pride in a joint effort to end the loss
of life to matters completely out of their control with an end result
of victory over a force that threatened the entire world.

Yes, this is about the restriction of movement, if one considers
maintaining safe distances as a means to limit the hardship
of others when close quarters may mean the difference
between suffering a great loss and the eventual freedom
to move about freely once the crisis has passed.

But this is not about food rationing, unless one considers the inability
to socially gather at either fine dining or fast food dining
establishments as the establishment of food rationing,
regardless of the availability of food at home,
despite, or as the direct result of, the hoarding of essential items.

What seems to plague the people of this tale is masked in the vanity
of people determined to do as they please and in an exaggeration of the loss
of freedom in the face of an economic hardship that would have been weathered
in the past by a determination to bring and end to that hardship.

And so the tale is simply this.
In a cold-hearted world, where the efforts of the people
might be seen as less demanding than during times of war,
where little thought was given to the health and safety of others,
and where simple sacrifices were disdained,
the ice detached and the people floated away.

~~ background music track for audio poem ~~
Ice Flow, by  Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Graphic image: Amazon image layered with Wikipedia image

37 thoughts on “A story of when the ice detached and the people floated away ~ with audio”

  1. WOWZA, KG! A massive undertaking, masterfully delivered with some great background music. Timely. Allusive but neither elusive nor distancing.
    You’ve nailed our times perfectly, without actually declaring war; brought our current reality home without plaguing us with boring journalism.
    I could never.

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  2. Powerful. The title line grabbed me too. I so agree with your premise – the resistance prolongs the suffering, it boggles the mind they dont see that. But a lot of things boggle my mind these days. A great write!

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  4. I have found this time most interesting… it really teaches you something about people, we all have different motivations for socially distancing…
    If this was more deadly people would do it save their own skin, but this time we know we have to give up something to keep others safe, and then there are those who simply won’t do it… we have to teach people to care. (and yes, we have to find ways to care about business owners too)

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  5. Bye-eeee! And good riddance. You make a very good case for the absolute selfishness that is manifesting itself these days. That hard core of people who call themselves ‘resistants’ but who really simply refuse to make the smallest sacrifice for the common good, deny they even have a responsibility. It’s frightening as well as sad.

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  7. This is quite different from your usual stuff, Ken. I associate you with lyrical, romantic pieces – I’m not sure I’ve seen you be this angry before. I like it.

    I sometimes wish quite a few people would head off and find somewhere to live together, and leave the rest of us to get on with being nice and sensible…

    This almost reads like a newspaper article, or a news flash. You read it so well – and the combination with the music is great. It made me think of Talking Heads (I hope you take that as a compliment!).

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Talking Heads is an ultimate compliment. Thank you!
      I was hoping to lend a level of reasoning to what amounts to a rant.
      The music was a fluke. I’ve used Kevin MacLeod in the past, but hadn’t thought of doing that for this. Then, as I Googled “ice flow” to find a graphic, the music appeared, and I couldn’t resist.

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  11. Cleverly woven together … captures the attitude that continues to prevail for a large number of “us”. Alas, we may all float away due to the attitudes only some of us hold … since we’re all in this together, whether we acknowledge thus or not.

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  12. I really enjoyed this, the audio gave it an extra dimension and you created this wonderful narrative piece bemoaning the selfishness of our times. Here it is very different, everyone is following the rules to the letter. It has been fascinating to live in two different countries during the pandemic and also to travel across Europe observing how the different countries and cultures respond.

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