Chipping at the ice

It is like I am chipping softly at the ice, a little bit at a time, trying to get to 
the clear water underneath, but the ice is thick and I can only chip a little bit 
at a time and every little bit that I chip fills up with water and when, the next 
morning, I come back to try to make more progress, all the cracks and crevices 
I have chipped, all the progress I have made, all those fissures have filled up with 
water in the night and refrozen, becoming once again just more ice. In some 
cases it seems the seams have somehow become even stronger, harder, more
intransigent and resistant to my efforts to break through to the water beneath.

I know that there are fish down there. I have seen flashes of them on occasions
when I have managed to make the ice thin enough to see to where the sun penetrates
into the depths and I know that if I could get through then I might capture one
of those fish and make a meal or a trophy or at least I might have a solid, silver
moving thing for a moment in my hands, painfully cold but brilliant and gleaming.