Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Discloses the Glacier


As a bird flies, a total experience –

all angles at once

above

through and all around:

this transparency reveals hidden energy

in each curving, turning, intersecting line.


She meditates on natural sculpture,

incises it

              into abstract planes:

crafts cracks and pressures’ dynamics

               into splintered translucencies.


Light is reflected in fracture –

is frozen –

making evanescent geometry

of the slides and sparkles,

               the fragmented mass

and the tracery of prismatic friction.


She wheels and glides, spying turquoise and pink 

in each crystal-snubbed glacier snout.