Gnomon

Leaf 174 – Reflections

 

This poem is about a remarkably long and slender icicle which I once saw while I was travelling in Switzerland during the winter. It was at a town, somewhere up in the mountains. I’d never seen such deep snow drifts before. But looking at this single very long icicle glinting in the sun, slowly dripping from the eaves of a tall building – it seemed rather menacing. Hanging there like the sword of Damocles. I couldn’t stop myself imagining it suddenly falling and impaling someone below – bringing their life to a rather sudden and gruesome end, like Father Brennan in the horror film, ‘The Omen’ (1976). But as I watched, the icicle did nothing more than gleam and occasionally drip in the sunlight. In a sense, I began to see this as sinister in a different way altogether. It suddenly seemed to take on a more profound and poignant, symbolic connotation. If one viewed the long icicle and its shadow as a kind of natural sundial, it now seemed to me that (through a simple process of environmental attrition) it was actually counting down, very slowly but inevitably, towards a greater, global catastrophe.

 

 

GNOMON

 

Shadow shortening – 

icicle drips from

the eaves.

 

 

This haiku was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #vssdaily writing prompt: 'ice.'

Photograph credits: HippoPX & HippoPX