University of Northern Iowa

VariationsAuthor(s): Roger MitchellSource: The North American Review, Vol. 267, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), p. 45Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124346 .

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The Ice Tree

Marianna and Ben, out sledding one evening, walked

home atop the snow wall until they reached the tree.

They burrowed down on the top soft snow in its shelter and lay there warm. Watching the stars. Thinking how it

would be to sleep outside in winter.

Marianna grew used to the tree. It seemed as though it

had always grown there. Sometimes she thought about its cut stem that was frozen down in the snow, and then she

could see it and it seemed she saw small white roots

appear at the bark edge, lengthening into a radius,

growing fat, finally diving for the earth. As winter waned and the tree stood, it seemed only natural that all this was

taking place under the snow?and that when it melted the tree would remain, rooted, held sturdy of itself and not in roots of ice. She would not have been the least

surprised had this occurred. When all the snow on the ground had melted and the

grass was beginning to color again, the big spruce stood

green and branchy. Its snowbank was the last to go. It was

well into April when the tree crashed down?still hanging on to its needles, not very bleached from the months of

sun?and two days before daffodils bloomed under bushes a few feet away.

Later, when Marianna thought about the ice tree, she

remembered that in the beginning it had amused her to be caught in what seemed to be a small classic struggle with nature, or its emissary. She had felt helpless against

it, and even when she'd had her way she still felt helpless. Especially with time. As its staying power became evi dent. The tree began to take on a certain stature that was

at the same time human and cruel. It seemed to be telling her something, something about living and dying and how they can sometimes be the same thing: what it can be

like to live in the forest, what it can be like to die in the

house, and what it can be like to live without the ice.

ROGER MITCHELL

VARIATIONS

I

I come back carrying a past

that happened here, but not to me,

and not to any of those like me

who borrowed a piece of the air here, and when they left, left building dreams

of leaving, and of coming back.

I've wanted to come back smiling,

full of teeth. I've wanted to undo

the frightened boy I knew then, his foolish cruelties and hate.

I've wanted what I've wanted so,

I hear faint cheering in my dreams.

A boy remembers always what

he'd rather not. A boy spends years

saying the thing he should have said, but didn't, to the girl who turned

and left him standing in a lot.

She leaves him standing in a lot,

and after twenty years or so,

he gets it right, the boy, standing in the empty lot in the head

of the grown man, stammering toward

faint light, blowing out the dark.

II

OK, there was no boy standing

in an empty lot. I saw it

in a movie, a bad B flick

in a small town where the popcorn

stank of rancid fat. And the girl, she was the biggest lie of all.

All right, there was a girl. Her name

was Phoebe. I forget her name.

The bit about the B movie

I made up. It seemed the right place to learn a bad habit you can't

ever seem to break your mind of.

I was young, though. Do you buy that?

And I stayed young, for a long time.

I married the girl. Jane, I think.

We ate popcorn for seven years,

and watched a bland double feature

that kept on ending till the end.

OK, I give up. I surrender.

Nothing remotely resembling

anything I've said ever was.

I came into the world naked

and alone. After that, things blur.

I fall into a ditch of facts.

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW/December 1982 45

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