Like Ice That Won't Melt in the Sun

What I trust is evanescence. The shift of yes to no, a smile suddenly strange, bared teeth. The house I thought was home with tables and chairs I don't recognize. A missing sister's sudden death, waking from her coma. Pregnant women flashed to ash, trapped in a toy factory blaze. The torment of elephants, rampaging, drug-dazed, fed a speed addiction by their handlers. The man who forced me down to earth, tied with his tie, to teach me a lesson. The pink glow of sunset, dropped to dark, too quickly to catch it. When you speak of something real that lasts through time, I think of waves, I think of sand, my feet captured on the beach, minute, minutes lapping ever deeper on my toes, sinking in this bowl of sand, a pedestal of sand. Until you break my brittle question with a simple, richer answer: yes, unchanged, enduring hope, the kind of stain that never fades, like ice (so deep, so dense, so old) like ice that won't melt in the sun. And I'm silenced by your answer. I've seen glaciers in Alaska -- green, immense, un-melting torrents so unlike your turquoise ocean and your brilliant, palm-struck beaches. Perhaps your speck of pure, pure cold can anchor down my burning call with no evaporation.