Mary Oliver - Ice lyrics

My father spent his last winter Making ice-grips for shoes Out of strips of inner tube and scrap metal. (A device which slips over the instep And holds under the shoe A section of roughened metal, it allows you to walk Without fear of falling Anywhere on the ice or snow.) My father should not have been doing All that close work In the drafty workshop, but as though he sensed travel at the edge of his mind, He would not be stopped. My mother Wore them, and my aunt, and my cousins. He wrapped and mailed A dozen pairs to me, in the easy snows Of Ma**achusetts, and a dozen To my sister, in California. Later we learned how he'd given them away To the neighbors, an old man Appearing with cold blue cheeks at every door. No one refused him, For plainly the giving was an asking, A petition to be welcomed and useful- Or maybe, who knows, the seed of a desire Not to be sent alone out over the black ice. Now the house seemed neater: books, Half-read, set back on the shelves; Unfinished projects put away. This spring Mother writes to me: I am cleaning the workshop And I have found so many pairs of the ice-grips, Cartons and suitcases stuffed full, More than we can ever use. What shall I do? And I see myself Alone in that house with nothing But darkly gleaming cliffs of ice, the sense Of distant explosions, Blindness as I look for my coat- And I write back: Mother, please Save everything.