Christianna Soumakis
karen eileen
live forever, new yorkina,
aprendiza, peregrina,
o you of creative handbags
japanese screen doors
ancestral wedgewood
and rationed caffeine
ever and ever conduct the wisteria
and goggled steeds of central park,
the ignored traffic signals,
the subways hissing their
gaseous prophecies unheeded,
the trains in their termite tunnels
brisk with commuting wind
and long may you reign, regina
crowned in shungite,
bedecked with library wifi
travel cups
backpacks packed quick
for afternoons at museums:
whitney, met
guggenheim, frick
o e-train innocent, bambina,
day and all unheimlich night
through smog and starbucks
pure light
ever on the toxic hudson
shine
arctic drift
Fridjof Nansen attempted to become the first man to reach the North Pole by intentionally freezing his ship in polar ice to harness, and utilize, then-theoretical arctic drift.
the vessel icebound at the pole
is there on purpose. ask Nansen:
the obstacle’s the way, the lock’s the gate—
the prison-skirt of polar ice,
the gentle going into night,
submission as strategy, eschewing fight:
we came here on our own power.
there are things no man can face
there are geodes full of grace
there are lions full of honey
and clocks that howl the seasonal hours
as earth’s axis lists through winter
into six-month summer. and it may be
our mission fails
and we die here, frozen sails
as warnings to dreamers
and every passing undreamed steamer
but even so—
year by year survivors go
ashore by naught but natural flow
each shipwrecked rubber duck holds on, still knows:
this planet also tilts to hope
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