Ice Cream Angel

In this new time of change, the sea ice melts, sliding, oozing, until its ancient soul diminishes, transforming like daybreak, into an ice cream angel, while warning flares scream like lights on a racing ambulance, into a black night, right before her white coat rises out of the sea, a creature of the cold, taking it in, just when dawn casts a foreign shadow over islands of frozen mass, waking her up from a routine of deep slumber still dreaming of the thickness of ice and the guarantee of a noonday meal. Now her eyes search the landscape for the north coast of Alaska, while a heaving breathing wind listens to the prophecy of the elders, in a language of wild animal voices, pushing her on to swim, now a white ruffled head in rising water, paddling, kicking, on and on for at least a week until she merges into the oceanic wetness where the wings of ice cream angels carry her home.