7 December 2012
The Wanderer by Amin Olson
The Wanderer by Amin Olson (15)
In wandering
Quivering men may kneel
An outside landscape
Shivers as Aurora Borealis delivers a shattering blow
An arctic punishment
Certain people may know,
The quivering men
The shivering men
Men who have danced with deepest fear—
And his waltz is a sight to see—
Know Aurora Borealis
And in the ice which kills indiscriminately
A wanderer
Faces an outside landscape
In the same way a big-game hunter widens his stance and
Grits his teeth
When the
Bear…
Turns… around
A natural reversal
Naturally,
The wanderer continues on his aching, plodding path
Impeded only by constant flurries of glacial drifts
Freezing feet
Arms
Mind overrun by snowflake dreams
Aurora Borealis is adorning the
Endless
Darkness interrupted by fusion
Above
He goes in the nude—
The savage, biting, howling breath of
Aurora Borealis cripples him anyway—
Exasperation exacerbated his only mask
Having
Long
Since dropped all the others he owned into powder snow
A sort of lethargy
Associated with the cold
Stumbles by an ice fishing hole decorated with a polar bear nuzzling in red
—very tasteful—
It raises its head and nods to the multicolored heavens
There is no reply, no matter
And follows a quivering man into his secure refuge
An insulated tent with an insulated sleeping bag
Standing over this shivering man
A sort of lethargy
Hours later, the new day is heralded
By an exquisite and excessive lack of sensory information
Associated with the cold
He followed a breadcrumb trail
Inward curiosity a deep-seated irritation
Trudging towards his own very personal light in the darkness—
Aurora Borealis glistening, shimmering, igniting overhead
The Wanderer dropped into powder snow