Any floe will do, but give it a name,

the Pater Noster, for a start, or the Isle of Latitudes

drifting North of Iceland out of Hudson Bay

in seas as mixed as the Bering Strait.

 

Choose the ice that’s narrowed at each end,

the melting equal in duration, your little nation’s future

dependent on the center clearing

any final reef the change of wind might make.

  

And deny all possibility that you’re drifting

sunless and alone, that you’re deranged, confused

by the solo berne on the map you yourself have sewn.

And deny, above all else, the albatross

  

whose wings you’ve sheared as windshields to the eyes.

You have a great distance of trust to cross,

so little of it bearing on a compass or a star.

You have only the dream of being lost a certainty,

  

that in the silence of the miles there will come

a conversation only you will hear. In that vast indifference

of the ice that drops its continents an inch each year,

you will survive on solitude each day or night

  

when even the moon your eyes betray

grows darker as you grow, and all around you

dance the petals of a sun burning in the cold blue of snow.

The light that draws you nearer is further than you know.