Sea Ice Somnambulism

Trudging slowly across the freeze
sunlight an argentine presence
the face barely registered for years,
this light without warmth

yet the body continued to move,
hooded eyes glass reflecting the far horizon
without seeing crevasse and divide
or soft swelling of a heavy ocean

Until that day of heaving water, frozen air,
and the faint lap of saline against the cliff
combined with rifle crack of fracturing ice
woke him up, the sea below, between his feet

A widening gap, indigo abyss to split him open
staring in disbelief, to wonder, to think,
how far from home this blue-white purgatory
in which the heart must learn to swim