Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Yellowknife

Having gone to Yellowknife, though not
above the tree line and having walked
in Yellowknife on streets bisecting
the now and then and having seen
the scraping of the earth’s carapace
against a sky with clouds, water with
boats and planes two-legged at exactly
the demarcation point between
earth and air, I wonder how anything
can exist there that is not a playing card
flipped down on a table piled with chips,
an open bottle of vodka, a primed rifle,
the promise of an unborn child, chill
northern lights, a hand reaching for
a hand, the winter cold that cauterizes
pain, a desire extended beyond the snow,
into the warmth of a ferocious love.

3 comments:

petergarner said...

wonderful poem, helm. reads really smoothly. great ending.

hwf said...

Thank you Peter. This is a reaction poem to this past weekend. What a trip and time.

Shisa said...

The name of the place, and the tragic reason for going there, play along in this bleak poem on a knife's edge between life and death.