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.

Last week, we read Mary Oliver's Cold Poem for discussion; this week our prompt was to take something out of what it stirs up in you and write your own poem. For me, of course, it stirred up Alaska.

Comments

[Linda Jacobs]

I've never been to the Tundra but feel like I have after reading your description! I love the line about the lichen! The short simple sentences really set the mood and reflect the barrenness. You never even use any "cold" words but I can feel them!

[carolee]

i've never been to alaska and "tundra" is rarely an image that even comes into my head so i found this really fascinating. and how you used it to play with big and small.

(p.s. can you show us how to do the code for using our logo as a link to "poem"? it would be cool if we could offer it to people for their blogs. email me: art [at] polkadotwitch [dot] com)

[Small Talk]

I absolutely loved this poem. Tell me, do you follow metre when you write poetry? As in, are you particular about it?

[SB]

Another reader has suggested that this is in the voice of the tundra, speaking its warning.

I really like that idea.

carolee -- I've sent the button in an email; let me know if it doesn't arrive...

Small Talk: I don't usually follow metre, just sound -- except when I try, like with the sonnet in the next post. But, unsuccessfully then. I have managed it sometimes, though.

Now I'm curious why you ask?

[Small Talk]

I like how you write, and am curious about the way you do it. I find it extremely difficult to stick to metre whenever I attempt poetry. So was wondering if you consider it a pre-requisite.

[SB]

I don't often (deliberately) write in metre, so I must not consider it necessary.

I see you live in Mumbai, so you probably *hear* something different than I do when you read my poems. I used to have a British housemate, with an accent that I think would be called 'posh' -- she sounds like those BBC news readers. I often asked her to read my poems aloud, just so I could hear them in that accent so different from mine.

Do you have recording ability on your computer? If you do, and if you're willing, we could try an experiment. Read this poem, and send me the MP3. I'll do the same, and post them both. Maybe we could even get other readers to give it a try.

I bet your reading will have more music in it than mine.

[Jillian]

Excellent tundra poem, with a flavor of the remoteness of the villages in the tundra. I prefer the tundra that is in the mountains ~ it is easier to grasp!

[daarg@mail.ru]

Hello! My name is Denis. A superb poem!!! I represent Tunguska Electronic Music Society from Russia. Now we are preparing a compilation of ambient music Tundra Ambient Dreams. Could we use it or a part of it for the cover design of our compilation?