Fragments of Frost and Fire - Episode 1 - The Slow Bloom of Ice

Introducing: Fragments of Frost and Fire

Some words arrive unexpectedly—unattached to any story, yet too vivid to be left unwritten. Over time, I’ve found myself collecting these fragments of poetry, pieces that don’t belong in my novels but still deserve a life of their own in the world.

My blog has already welcomed one of these wandering verses, but Fragments of Frost and Fire marks the beginning of something more—a home for these untethered creations. A space where fleeting thoughts and deeper reflections take form, shaped by ice and flame, stillness and fury, life and loss. Some will stand alone, while others may one day find their place in larger works, but all will linger here, waiting to be felt.

The first poem under this theme is The Slow Bloom of Ice, a meditation on death not as a sudden force, but as something that seeps, grows, and takes hold from within.

The Slow Bloom of Ice

 It flows in all life,

A pure, primordial element,

From which life emerges,

The sustenance that maintains life,

And fills the bodies of mortals,

The divinity that cleanses,

The body,

And the soul.

Death’s icy grip,

Its cold embrace,

Philosopher’s words,

As they watch through the haze,

Of the life that still warms them,

They see a cold embrace,

But have missed the creeping frost,

Spreading from the marrow outward.

Their icy fingers of death,

Are not fingers at all,

But a chill,

Unfurling from the bones,

Curling into the flesh.

Water may be life,

But ice stretches those molecules,

And fills that space,

Chasing the life from it

Bit by bit.

A slow bloom of ice in the veins.

The body is a vessel for the soul,

But no body,

Survives without water,

So perhaps,

Water is life,

And the carrier of souls,

And time the quiet seep of winter,

Welling up from within,

Frostbite of that soul,

Deepening with every breath.

For those whom death chooses to visit,

Before time calls him forth,

You may never feel,

The cold,

Seeping from your bones,

Resting in the spaces between your joints,

As your soul is forced from your body,

Molecule by molecule,

Until warmth abandons you,

Leaving you to wish,

Death would reach out for your soul,

Before time forces it from your body.

©Lawrence Nault 2025

Whispers Between Worlds

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