Marlene Maxwell

Blue Ice Marlene Maxwell

Blue Ice is not an attempt to be catchy or complicated. These are just words that give away emotion and substance to the expressions that fall all around "thin ice" They are just words that apply to what I write about most - relationships of the intimate kind - often those not considerate of our welfare or worth. I have wrestled an almost innate need to rescue and fix people, obeying false commandments and paying penance to procure my own good, and believe I deserve it. What makes it too daring to save ourselves before extending an arm through shards of blue ice, clutching a hand held offering . . . still beating? I do not want you to think this is a dark book shrilling prophetic doom in contorted faces. It is about rising up on the power of our own self-worth. It is about being anchored by the shouts from lamp lit watch towers, old draw bridges, and warmed stick built shacks - everywhere. If there is obscurity in my poems and stories, it's so you may see yourself in a few words, a phrase or sentence, and chisel or sculpt what you need to find in one spring fed pocket of air that you are not alone . . . it is in the wrestling with cold swirling waters that we find our bliss, sustain it breath by breath, and round by round. Am I on thin ice? Maybe, but I can see blue a safe distance away. Just words . . .