Arctic Movement

Arctic Movement

White on white,

polar bear in a blizzard

like a blank sheet of unlined paper---

nothing to do but

read subtleties,

everything between the lines

This is north of the

circle where most warm

blooded creatures never go

and at night with moonlight through

the haze, everything's blue

In the non-darkness the bear stirs,

belly longing for fish

a full ton-and-a-half of

breathing hunger

ice-caked and

nostrils like blow holes or

thermal

vents over

waking layers

Slowly the music begins--- his ears

catch it--- the movement of

water beneath

where the salmon move darting

like slivers of star

in an underground sky

the only true blackness, there,

under the bear

only touchable by sound

Two weeks, maybe three and the long stems

will thaw and stand straight out of the

frozen ground.

The bear will lift at night, to all fours,

then just two--- tall as a trunk

and as the white melts

into the ground

he will become a great ghost

a glacier of flesh---

hunting over the new tundra.