Ice Raft

A friend of mine, who happens to be a poet, appeared in a dream I had the other night. It's always hard to reconstruct dreams, which have no logic or coherence (and it's usually terribly boring when someone tries to do so) but the most tangible element of this dream was a gift that this friend gave to me. We were in some kind of poetry workshop, the theme of which was (I think) vessels. At the conclusion, participants presented one another with gifts, and she presented me with a beautiful carved wooden watercraft...I wish I could draw it, or find an online picture that remotely resembled it, but it was smooth, polished, curved like a ladle, a bit shallow to be a canoe, but too deep to be a surfboard, maybe a little like a sleigh. There were words etched into it in graceful lettering. I looked closely, and they said, among other things, "Ice Raft".

Ice raft? Is there such a thing? What does it mean? Is it some sort of metaphor? A recreational toy? Emergency transport for a cataclysmic time? Or simply art, an object of beauty, no interpretation required.

I think of the little boat that appears in John O'Donohue's Blessing:

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

Maybe the ice raft is my currach of thought, ambiguous and without sails.

But the room, when I awoke in the night, was definitely filled with moonlight.

I told my friend about the dream, and she said maybe our friendship can be an ice raft to help carry us over the difficult portions of our lives.

And she attached this poem, by Mark Nepo, which seems absolutely perfect to me on this New Year’s Eve:

Adrift

         by Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of

wonder and grief. The light spraying

through the lace of the fern is as delicate

as the memories forming their web

around the knot in my throat. The breeze

makes the birds move from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost

in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh

of the next stranger. In the very center, under

it all, what we have that no one can take

away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is so beautiful.