We have our winnah!
To explain the riddle:
Possibly very thin, or white and thick,
Opaque mayhap, or translucent, clear—
Whether seen or unseen alike both very slick,
One creeps with fingers like a witches.
[Ice may be anywhere from thick white to thin clear, even "black ice", which for all intents and purposes is invisible. Dry ice is thick and white. Both types are slick and slippery, one because it is water, the other because it melts at room temperature, and gets covered in liquid. The "creeping fingers like witches" are icicles.]
Is that a sheet? Is that a cube? Is that a spike?
Hummm. This one wet; that one dry.
One smokes and burns, funny like—
The other too may smoke or seem to cry.
[Ice comes in sheets, cubes, spikes. Water ice is wet, then there's dry ice.
Dry ice melts as I said at room temperature, but being so cold smokes and burns the skin. On a warm day evaporation (good catch, Virgil!) makes water ice melt, seeming to "weep" and smoke "steam"}
Power of Preservation gives them value,
Power for Destruction lies within them too
Yet when not solid one is life, one death
Yet one name alone will name the two…
And that would be:
ICE!
[You use it to store food or in refrigeration. Avalanches, hypothermia, death by freezing, frost-bite, not to mention dry-ice is poisonous, will suck oxegen from a room, will cause water to foam and froth etc. Water is the source of all life, but Dry Ice is frozen Carbon Dioxide, which you can't breathe. So death. But both are ice.]
Anyone else got a good riddle?
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Originally Posted by Poetess
