Five lines, no capital letters, and a full stop only at the very end: Mary F. C. Pratt's "Ice Storm Song" reads like a quick walk through a wood where something has gone wrong and strangely beautiful at the same time. The title and the dateline, January 8-13, 1998, tell us the subject is an ice storm. The poem never explains further. It names no person, no house, no power line, only trees and what they do. That restraint is its central idea. The storm is rendered entirely through the sights, sounds and smells of the forest, and it is allowed to be a wonder and a wreck at once.
The first line is pure picture: "birches bent in arches filigreed like churches." Filigree is fine ornamental work of twisted metal thread, a surprising word for ice-coated twigs, and it makes the storm sound like a jeweller's craft. "Arches" and "churches" almost rhyme, so the image clicks shut like a latch, and the comparison adds a vaulted, hushed solemnity. Still, a bent birch is a birch under load. The alliteration of "birches bent" carries a little of that strain. The beauty is already a weight.
Then the senses switch from eye to ear. "Oak and popple pop and crackle" is a line you can almost beat time to, with its heavy opening stresses. "Popple" is a regional name for poplar, and the word is a small gift to the poet: it contains "pop" and ends with the same soft "-le" as "crackle," so the tree's name turns into its own sound effect. Pop and crackle is also what a fire does, so ice makes the noise of burning, a quiet irony that the poem never comments on.
Line three repeats the pattern of two trees followed by a verb, but the verb is harsher: "ash and maple split in time." The phrase "in time" is pleasingly slippery. It can mean in rhythm, as a musician keeps time, which suits a poem called a song. It can also mean eventually, or at the right moment. Either way, the splitting is tidy and measured, and the line stops short like the end of a bar. Damage becomes percussion.
Line four slows everything down and changes the verdict: "spruce and hemlock hold together closing like umbrellas." After the clipped lines before it, this one stretches out with a long, soft ending. The evergreens do not snap. They fold. The simile is also the most ordinary in the poem, a household object after the churches, and it brings a touch of humour. Notice how the poem has quietly sorted the forest into trees that break and trees that hold. Judging by the wording, "hold together" is hard to read as being only about spruce, but the poem leaves that thought for the reader to supply.
The last line widens and changes sense again: "and over all the sharp clear smell of fresh cut pine." Beginning with "and" makes it feel like the end of a list that could go on. "Over all" suggests how ice coats everything, and also that this smell is the final, overarching impression. "Sharp" and "clear" are words we would normally apply to touch and sight, and they are also ice's own qualities, so even the smell is described in the storm's terms. The phrase "fresh cut" is the poem's boldest move. Nobody in the poem holds a saw, so the storm itself is the cutter. The scent we associate with Christmas trees and sawmills comes here from broken wood, and the poem ends on injury and fragrance together. The rhyme of "time" in line three with "pine" in line five links the splitting to the smell it releases.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it holds in so little space. It moves through sight, sound and smell, and its trees are sorted into those that bend, break and hold. It never tells us how to feel, and it names no victim or hero. Calling it a "song" is a choice. It suggests that the poet found something worth singing in a disaster, without pretending the disaster was harmless.