Due North

I.

A ship in the night

adrift on a lonely sea,

caught between dark waves.

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White castles, sculpted

by Nature's determined  hands,

melting in silence.

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The pod surfaces,

calling and leaping as one:

wolves with black fins hunt.

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Lights, dancing brightly:

luminescence, a spectrum

of ribbons flashing.

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Spotted and speckled,

a tooth for a tusk dives deep:

legend of the north.

II.

Alabaster fur,

a living boulder recalls:

"it was colder then."

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New-snow face, flippers

softly white, hides on hard ice,

dark eyes round with fear.

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A hidden shadow,

ghosts of a people, now gone:

the canoe left bare.

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Frozen chunks  unfreeze,

fall with loud splashes and drift –

the ice-land waning.