Antediluvian
Spring has sprung
A leak in my paddleboat.
Life was so much simpler,
Before the lake thawed.
All through the deep freeze
I hid in the hoarfrost,
Too brittle to move or
To want any more.
But when you came calling,
With moorhens, meltwater,
I felt myself floating,
I let myself fall.
And soon I was squelching with
Springtime and birdsong,
A warbler soaring,
The waterfall’s roar.
Now everything’s moving,
Thick growing and breeding,
The trees jiggling blossom,
The lake curdling frogspawn,
But sometimes I long for
The stuckness of frozen,
The solid composure
Of sheet-ice and snowman.
The freedom of being becalmed
Going nowhere,
The cruel, locked-in secrets,
The ice-clear exposure.
So, though I am cold now,
I cling to the hoarfrost,
Lost splinters of winter,
The icy dissenters.
And carry on seeking
That strange kind of closure,
The right to freeze over,
Before the lake thaws.
© Eleanor Boulton
Third Prize Winner in the 2025 Enfield Poet’s Poetry Competition