© 2014 by Lisa Shatzky

Lisa Shatzky's poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies and in six chapbooks published by Leaf Press (and edited by Patrick Lane). Her most recent poetry book is Blame it on the Moon (Black Moss, 2013). Do Not Call Me By My Name was published by Black Moss Press in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Poetry Award.

Shatzky has also had prose published in Living Artfully: Reflections from the Far West Coast (The Key Publishing Group, 2012), as well as poetry published in a Bowen Island anthology published by the Bowen Island Arts Council in 2013 called This Island We Celebrate. When not writing she works as a psychotherapist on Bowen Island, B.C,. where she lives.

"Unfreezing" was published in Blame It on the Moon.

Unfreezing

Sometimes you don't know you're frozen
until the ice begins to melt
and the ground trembles.
Suddenly what is solid softens
in your hands, the cold edges
lose their brilliant clarity and the undulating white
bleeds into something else;

humpback whales breaking the surface
to come up for air,
thousands of Monarch butterflies homeward bound,
bees dancing on the windowsill
of your skin, pins and needles
exploding, icicle daggers falling,
falling.

At first there seems no end
to the pain
when the surface breaks
and you beg for the wind to stop.
Tell the whales to go back under.
You hang on to the frozen
pieces like lifeboats
in a great storm.

But the wind is silent no more
when it knows your name.
The hummingbird appears at your door
when the song is dreamed.
And sun on water
is liquid gold
warm enough to melt tears
from your eyes.