'Thin Ice' promises a quiet stroll through a dappled woodland of words, wherein big bad wolves and other dangers lurk. It gives readers gentle warnings about the desperate fragility of human relationships and quiet messages about appreciating what you already have.
In 'Thin Ice', Sheila Large brings together her first collection of sensual, human poetry that leads us on a winding journey through life, love and the light and dark of relationships. Sometimes wistful, but never sentimental, these poems rock with rhythm and rhyme and often twist about with a surprise conclusion. Echoing Robert Frost, who's perfectly timed 'Fire and Ice' introduces the book, 'Thin Ice' also warns that most of our misfortunes are of our own making. As we live with fire as desire, and ice as hatred, one or other will, in time, destroy us all.
These poems warn us of the ways in which we are already destroying ourselves, through complacency, cruelty and selfishness. Poems like 'Dressed to Kill' remind us that while we may get what we want, this does not mean we have achieved our aim. In 'Our Discreditable Secret' and 'Snow Melts', we find we may realise too late what was there all along.
This eclectic collection also evokes a sense of life stumbling along quite happily beyond our own narrow worlds, as in 'Summer Elsewhere'. Yet it leaves us with a strong message of hope, as in the poem that gives us the title of Thin Ice, 'Avoid Cliches Like the Plague'.
This is a metaphysical self-help fix to calm the spirit and lift the soul, to be read in the shade of a favourite old tree or by a softly glowing fireside.