It was the other day that I was sitting by myself
next to a window in a restaurant, with the white & yellow light
baking the glass.  It almost looked like eggs frying,
sunny side up.

I was swirling the ice in my water with a bendable straw,
content with watching the eggy afternoon light fight
with nature – or something – creating other colors
In my water glass.

I sped up my swirling, watching the reds & the blues,
& yellows & greens appear & sparkle
then fade & become clear water again.  Leaning in closer,
I tried to see

thinking that surely something is happening,
working beneath the surface.  My hand was
still on the straw, in the glass, spinning faster.
But then one

tiny fragment of an ice cube flies from the glass,
as if it had ejected from the glass like a pilot from his burning plane.
I stopped swirling the ice & looked over at the fragment beside the glass,
an iceberg in the desert that was my table.

Then, as if propelled by some force of gravity
(that, or it was determined to reach something I couldn’t see)
the tiny ice cube slowly shuffled forward,
stealing rays of light for its own.

But after it came around the side of the glass,
catching the sun in its melting body
and becoming part of the desert that was my table,
it leaned, then fell forward on the table.

It was like watching death take someone I didn’t know,
but I was happy I had witnessed it
and I wrote this poem with the sun shining behind me,
being the tiny ice cube.