CITY LIGHTS
The evening news on New Year's Eve showed scenes of New York City: the lights like stars shining, the red and white ribbons of traffic, the people on the streets; and I was touched, not by their humanity but by their individuality. The mass of darkness and lights, of offices and apartments, where each light has an on-off switch, each window someone who looks out--at sunlight, at storms, at night--and sighs or cries or smiles. I will never look at New York City, or any city, quite the same way again.

LIGHTS
by Diana Carolyn Ice

Lights, millions of lights,
Lighted squares and rectangles,
Dots and points of light,
White lights, green lights, red lights.
The City at night.

On the streets cars glide silently,
Trucks and busses roar,
Families window shop;
A girl runs to catch up to Mommy and Daddy;
A man takes his son’s hand;
Two lovers stop and laugh, then hurry on;
A couple hails a cab; another boards a bus.
People hurry across a street.
Each one has a past, a hope, a dream.
Some have a future; some have none.
Each has a face, a place they call a home,
Whether halfway up a skyscraper,
Or miles away across a bridge, down long dark roads,
Or a cardboard box under that bridge’s northern pier.
But it is home to them.

Look at their faces. They feel, they hurt, they love,
They smile, they cry, they pray, they wonder why.

How could you not love them?

ICE CRYSTALS

"AN AMERICAN GRACE"

Bless, O Lord, those who patrol
our streets and seas and skies
that we may dwell in safety.
And bless those who work our fields
and tend our flocks and herds
that we may eat when we are hungry.
And bless us, Lord, that we may come
to love and serve Thee better. Amen.

{A poem - prayer published in Easy Herb Cooking for Busy People, by D.C. Ice. Burlingham, N.Y., Contentment Cottage, 1996.}

ICE CRYSTALS

"A BROWN LEAF"
a poem by Carol R. Ice

In the woods today a leaf fluttered down.
It was wrinkled and old and bent and brown.
But it met the wind and began to play,
And I watched it until it whirled away.
And I could but wonder, when time and grief
Should have made me old and bent as the leaf,
Would my heart be as young and full of glee
As the brown leaf playing in front of me?

{Published in The Garden of Life, 1995; reprinted in A Cloud of the Latter Rain, 1995.}