Inspired by Gaynor Kane, Ice Queen at CS Lewis Square, Belfast
The Ice Queen
Her glacial beauty, all silver, blue, and white
seduces—she is a frozen fjord, sparkling and
magnetic, drawing your light to her pole,
absorbing you.
With frosted breath
she offers you promises,
and even though you know
nothing frozen grows,
you accept
eagerly like a child,
without thought of could or should—
her cold sweets melt in your mouth, gone.
I am once again participating in Paul Brookes’ April Ekphrastic Challenge. Each day, I will post my poem(s) here. You can see the art and read the other responses by going to Paul’s site here.
The artists are Gaynor Kane, John Phandal Law, and Anjum Wasim Dar. Thank you for your wonderful and inspiring art!
Yesterday and today: Merril's historical musings 
I had to go look at the Ice Queen. Your words match her beautifully.
Thank you very much, Robin!
The Snow Queen is one of my favourite fairy tales, and I always collate her in my mind with the White Queen from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe…your poem reminds me of both ❄️
The Snow Queen is one of my favorite fairy tales as well. I still have the book, which I read so many times, the cover has fallen off.
Thank you, Ingrid! Wonderful.
I was trying to allude to the characters without making it simply a description.
I LOVE this poem! It could be a metaphor for so many difference things in life.
Thank you very much, Liz. Exactly!
You’re welcome, Merril.
This is wonderful, Merril. I agree with Liz. 🙂 And find your poem goes so very well with the image!
Thank you very much, Dale! 😊
That image is cool and the square looks like such an interesting place–well, Belfast looks beautiful in Gaynor’s photos.
My pleasure and Yes! It looks beautiful.
It does.
This is such a beautiful rendering of the Ice Queen! The language, all blue and crisp.
She’s a character I have mixed feelings about. Great as a character, but as a metaphor, it irks me that (like the White Witch) in many moralistic stories, the cold heartless deceiver who tempts the good children/heroes astray is a woman.
Thank you! I’m pleased you thought that about the language.
Yes, I agree with you (of course) about that sort of depiction–and also the sirens and such who lure those poor men, who despite being brave heroes, cannot control themselves around a beautiful woman. Ugh.
You know something that really gets up my nose about all this self-righteous censorious banning of books and weeding out of dodgy content? It’s that literature has always been full of misogyny, reproducing an idea of women as wallpaper, feeble-minded, vicious, and who, out of all the righteous throwing books on the fire crew has ever got upset about that? Not that I think there’s ever an excuse or necessity for censoring the past, but the censors seem to pick and choose which discriminations they’ll get their danders up about.
Of course they do. Just like the governor of Florida is banning MATH books because they supposedly teach critical race theory–which isn’t even taught in schools. And the people who will disrupt countries because they insist their freedom is being taken away because they have to wear a mask, but who have no problem with imposing restrictions on women (or anyone who doesn’t believe as they do).
Nobody thinks that women’s rights are really serious on the scale of discriminations. We’re supposed to be grateful for what we have.
Well, the right-wing GOP here is trying to take away what we do have.
It makes me smile when I see comments on twitter from Americans about the French presidential election, about Marine Le Pen and the far right and how ashamed the French ought to be for voting for such an outrageous person. While she is on the extreme right in French politics, she is quite moderate compared with many mainstream GOP politicians. She certainly wouldn’t touch the abortion laws, relax gun laws or bring back the death penalty. It’s all relative really.
I don’t know enough about her–less horrible than her father, I guess? But perhaps just playing to the more moderates. But yes, our GOP has become an extreme right-wing party. It’s getting very scary.
Yes, she’s gone for the ‘soft’ image, and while we had Eric Zemmour as an even more right wing candidate, she just let him draw the fire. Now he’s out, she has to come up with policies and she’s not doing very well. All her big talk about what she’d do about immigration, civil rights, public spending, would be illegal and impossible, so she’s been obliged to change tack, and hasn’t got a lot else to fall back on.
brilliant tale mixed into your words Merril! 💖
Thanks so much, Cindy! 😊
pleasure!💖
Beautiful capture. (L)
Thank you.
As usual I read this marvellous metaphor, several times, before looking at the artwork. I still don’t know how you got so much out of it
Thank you much, Derrick. That is most kind. 💙
It’s quite neat going and looking at the pics, THEN reading your poem.
You eek a lot out of what you see. Thank you, Merril!
Thank you for reading, Resa!