MiPOesias

CAFE' CAFE' EDITION

 

ISSN 1543-6063

 


Sharon Brogan

Tundra

The tundra can soften, it can swallow you.
An eye accustomed to mountains must learn
to see small, to see the tiny pattern of lichen
crawling across an unbounded landscape.

Land and sea, both flat as paper, only a thin
line between. Even the colors are close.
A village set down here is an alien thing,
an artifact on stilts, unlikely and unreliable.

Here is a world without edge. Here there
is no horizon. Here, you know you are small.
The bear is a large thing. The sea is a large
thing. The ice is a large and dangerous thing.

There are people who know the tundra,
but you are not of those people. You
are small. You are weak, and all that
you know is useless.

 

 
Sharon lives in Western Montana, and feels an abiding connection to Southeast Alaska. She rarely sends out her work, 
but has been published in Calyx Journal. A rejection letter from The New Yorker is pinned to her study wall.
 
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