The Heart of Ice

The Heart of Ice

Our Davey puffs like a steam train in winter, but,

With barely a curl of vapour overhead,

You’d never picture him mooching around the goalmouth,

Or humping his mailsack up and down

the toughest round in the depot, at Low Fell.

His breath hard to summon up, matches

The blood flow from his heart.

‘Down to four percent Mr Stewart.’

The consultant said. ‘As much as that?’

He replied, making the effort to stand up.

Outside, it starts snowing. We always think

Back to the same winter. The one that marked

The end of childhood and the beginnings

Of our adult life. Hot summers over and

Bleak winters on the horizon.

We had been walking home through the blizzard.

Some shelter afforded by the cars dumped by the roadside.

Even though they were buried in snow,

Still the smooth mountain range over them

Gave away their position under the four-foot drifts.

Head down, I ploughed ahead, Davey literally

In my footsteps, each up to our knees.

Clinging to the top of the fence that had previously

Reached over our heads, now no more than

A picket, the drift sloped up on both sides.

Davey bellowed something from three feet behind me

That I couldn’t make out in the ear-freezing gale.

I turned to see him retreating away.

And whispered a shout into the storm,

‘I’ll come back this way for you.’

Later, back home, our feet returning to us,

And two mugs of hot chocolate in hands,

He explained. The buried cars’ snowy coverings,

Echoing the peaks and troughs of British industry,

Were showing the tracks of pre-blizzard fun.

Someone could not resist the December anarchy,

Deciding to get up and run the mountain ranges,

Seeing familiar fields and roads from seven feet higher.

Davey, somehow, sheltering in my lea, had noticed

The sudden, mysterious end of the tracks.

The evidence disappearing with each gust,

Again, somehow, and more on instinct,

He came to the place. A pair of cheap trainers

Protruded, marking the end to the fun run.

Reaching over, Davey grabbed both and pulled.

Nothing moved. Clambering up for better purchase,

On car bonnet or boot, he bent, and pulled again.

Two legs emerged, the tracksuit bottoms on them

Flapping in the howling wind. He pulled again.

A skinny, struggling waist appeared, like,

The most ridiculous and pointless magic trick.

An anorak, containing more snow than body,

Scrambled into view. Desperately gasping air.

The blue-est hands clutched around until,

They found anchorage on my brother’s scarf.

He’d been racing back home alone and

Could not pass up the rooftop route.

Losing his footing at the worst possible moment,

He’d fallen, face-first, between two vehicles,

And lay there, as abandoned as they had been.

Somewhere, a grown man probably remembers

His winter adventure and the highly-unlikely angel

Who came to his aid. Perhaps he recalls it only

As a frozen fracture of a dream. The fall, the rescue,

The concerned face, iced-up Magnum moustache and all.

He struggles to the window. ‘Coming down heavy now.’

If it keeps up, I know he’ll be looking down again

In an hour. Watching between the cars.

He winces. ‘It’s like sharp ice in me chest.’

I consider his, to be a very poor reward.

The Heart of Ice

ERIC SCARBORO for Davey Stewart