Publication Date: May 15, 2026
Paperback, 132 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-46-8
David Hargreaves’ Watch for Ice on Bridge couples personal memories and experiences against the backdrop of the natural world. Hargreaves grapples with the drowning death of his younger brother – “No one warned my little brother there will be no warning… // ...if my belly crawl and wrist lock grab, like I had seen on TV, might save him.” A harsh cancer diagnosis confronted, “To placate the Fates, spinning the thread of this tale: six weeks radiation / And a hormone injection.” These incidents set, respectively, against a winter frozen lake and the cold sterility of the modern MRI lab are vividly described and evocative. Watch for Ice on Bridge takes the reader into Hargreaves’ experiences with frank emotion and no sentiment.
Praise for David Hargreaves & Watch for Ice on Bridge
From chemotherapy to needle-nose pliers to a Swainson’s thrush, there’s a singular voice that finds mystery and wonder wherever it goes. The power, here, is that Hargreaves refuses easy taxonomies… these poems don’t seek to order the world or arrange dioramas of the human experience. They instead shine a light on all that is deranged and beautiful and impossible. They live in the irreconcilable spaces we call a daily life. A powerful read.
—Michael McGriff, author of Angel Sharpening its Beak & Inquest
David Hargreaves’ poems combine gentle, sometimes delicate language with a robustness of perception that aims to capture the world in all its complex diversity—not with the aim of preserving it in amber, locking it up in a museum case, or pressing it between the pages of a musty book, but in order to allow it to dance, to sway, in our imaginations and memories. Watch for Ice on Bridge is a book of many pleasures, a book to savor.
—Troy Jollimore, author of Tom Thomson in Purgatory & Syllabus of Errors
About the Author
Born in Detroit, now a longtime resident of Oregon, David Hargreaves is a poet, translator and linguist. His translation of Nepal Bhasa poet Durga Lal Shrestha’s collection of poems, The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets, appeared in 2014, and his translation of Chittadhar Hrḍaya’s poem “River,” for the anthology River Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet Series), appeared in 2022. His own book of poems Running Out of Words for Afterwards (Broadstone) was published in 2022.
Publication Date: May 15, 2026
Paperback, 132 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-46-8
David Hargreaves’ Watch for Ice on Bridge couples personal memories and experiences against the backdrop of the natural world. Hargreaves grapples with the drowning death of his younger brother – “No one warned my little brother there will be no warning… // ...if my belly crawl and wrist lock grab, like I had seen on TV, might save him.” A harsh cancer diagnosis confronted, “To placate the Fates, spinning the thread of this tale: six weeks radiation / And a hormone injection.” These incidents set, respectively, against a winter frozen lake and the cold sterility of the modern MRI lab are vividly described and evocative. Watch for Ice on Bridge takes the reader into Hargreaves’ experiences with frank emotion and no sentiment.
Praise for David Hargreaves & Watch for Ice on Bridge
From chemotherapy to needle-nose pliers to a Swainson’s thrush, there’s a singular voice that finds mystery and wonder wherever it goes. The power, here, is that Hargreaves refuses easy taxonomies… these poems don’t seek to order the world or arrange dioramas of the human experience. They instead shine a light on all that is deranged and beautiful and impossible. They live in the irreconcilable spaces we call a daily life. A powerful read.
—Michael McGriff, author of Angel Sharpening its Beak & Inquest
David Hargreaves’ poems combine gentle, sometimes delicate language with a robustness of perception that aims to capture the world in all its complex diversity—not with the aim of preserving it in amber, locking it up in a museum case, or pressing it between the pages of a musty book, but in order to allow it to dance, to sway, in our imaginations and memories. Watch for Ice on Bridge is a book of many pleasures, a book to savor.
—Troy Jollimore, author of Tom Thomson in Purgatory & Syllabus of Errors
About the Author
Born in Detroit, now a longtime resident of Oregon, David Hargreaves is a poet, translator and linguist. His translation of Nepal Bhasa poet Durga Lal Shrestha’s collection of poems, The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets, appeared in 2014, and his translation of Chittadhar Hrḍaya’s poem “River,” for the anthology River Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet Series), appeared in 2022. His own book of poems Running Out of Words for Afterwards (Broadstone) was published in 2022.
