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Ice

Water is a friend to us, a laughing, playful sprite,
Greeting us each morning, weeping in the night,
Sparkling in its banter, elusive in its zest.
Happy are the children who can understand it best.

Water is within us, and we a part of it,
We carry our own ocean or at least a little bit.
The red tide that has colored it betokes the blood we share,
More than all the breath we blow means we are partly air.

Our water is a food to us, and carries woes away,
And clouds become our cover tucking in at end of day.
A fever can bring fire to the balance that we seek,
And ever helpful water is a nurse when we are weak.

Yet even water can oppose us and bring its wrath to bear,
And crash upon our hovels when it teams up with the air.
Sometimes a sea of water overcomes us as a flood,
And we are left to wonder why an ocean needs our blood.

There comes a time when best of friends must pass,
Our friend the water turns into a stone of glass,
And frozen clouds and turbulence made into solid form,
And all the softness goes out from the thing that had been warm.

Yes, water dies and brings its own fresh flowers to the wake,
A petaled tear which gently falls as a snowflake,
Yet water has one lesson still to teach us and to warn,
That we will have a cycle too, and we will be reborn.

That we will pound ourselves against the rocks upon the shore,
Eroding folly and excesses in our never-ending war.
A fight against all prejudice and hatred til we sleep,
And joined with other mourners is the water that they weep.

NicknamedBob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . December 6, 2004