POLAR

Today we shot the last of the huskies
such are the trials of use and sacrifice

of butchered seal-blubber and reindeer skin
drawn taut over frostbitten ghosts of men

as much as we might drive our colours north
toward the frozen axle of the earth

subzero and its stricken images
persist   snowpack   windchill   glacial seas

a great white silence at the end of life
we’re going nowhere now   nowhere is safe