KAMCHATKA TRAILS

 

Sometimes I dream of Siberia

and reindeer herds invading wilderness

invisible on paper maps or Google.

 

From nowhere a tiny village:

a post office, gas station, two hotels

an outdoor pool for masochists;

 

mountains wear a cloak of ice

the Moscow cook's on strike again

as executioner climate change

 

advances drunk with forest songs

sink-holes, universal negligence;

tundra worms freeze solid underground.

 

Shamanic laments echo across a lake

where brittle waterfalls stand

frozen at oblivion's farthest edge

 

and fat-wrapped grandmothers

light midnight candles to the saint

of trembling concertinas.

 

Lamplit Underground, October 2019. Editor Janna Liggin