Caught in the pages of your precious book,
like the carved figurehead of a galleon
frozen in the icefloe, you navigated
the Antarctic islands towards the coast;
and searched beyond the polar vortex
for a stairway to the kingdom in the stars.

You and I stood before an infinite recursion
of mirrored skies, reflected in the glacier’s heart.
But I was caught in the snares of this world
and snagged upon the earthly shores, and though
I begged you stay, you stepped away, and left
me broken in the light of the pale-bone ice.

In your dress of silver, like a living meteor
you ignited strange enchantments; became
a brilliant ship sailing on the white ocean,
chasing six dogs running on skirts of icy lace.
I heard the void call in a high voice, singing
“Evermore shall rest the sun” and found you gone.

I searched where green glass titans float,
on a widowed sea; snow-dressed bellies bulging
to the frozen sky. In the aurora’s cascades
you hid among a thousand ice-green eyes
and cast your absence in that diamond-land,
a lost shadow, beneath the emerald glare.

I too took up that book; drank deep the ice
and poison from the page. For cure, chanted
that spell with frozen lips; the fifty forbidden
names of snow, that opened wide the starry gates
Now I wait as dark splinters fall from midnight-noon
as the fingers of the curious dead spread

like frozen ripples on this lost and alien shore,
their morbid hues reflected in crystal sands.
Scattering fern-fronds on the glass, they whisper
how they adore before your distant throne
and I await our reunion as hours and reason
turn slower, ever slower in the utter cold.

I shall wait, until these heavy eyes close,
illuminated by the vision of the last sun
cooling in a universe that aged too fast;
its equilibrium complete, as all the stars
grow dim; leaving only the residual glow
of cold iron cinders fading in the dark.