Polar Bear Poems

by Ari Berk

Arktos

Rouse with hunger or indifference

to a morning darker than the night

Shake the season from your fur and rise

to stand inseperable from the snow

Below the ice swim seals thick with blood

So shaking somnolence from your brow

you crawl like a man across the drift

smelling for prey, intentions sharp as stone

Wind of knives and fury born of stars

May not deter a giant built of ice and claws

Unless the sleep of solstices be on him

He, Son of Sedna and the Northern Waste

Polar Bear Dreams Himself Swimming

Turn and dive and dream

beneath the breaking floes

and weightless sing your name.

Does star light pierce the surface of the sea?

Or do you navigate by other sight?

Not easy on the frozen land,

you seem more elegant below . . .

Below the ice and waves which you do churn

Below the turning sublunary world . . .

Now all within is white: Star, Snow, Bear, Light.