Museum Piece (Poetry)

In death he rears, his frozen threat
walled in by glass, a polar bear
with fearsome claws suspended, swipes
the stale, unmoving, empty air.

He towers tall above the heads
of gawping schoolboys craning near
to view the yellowed rows of teeth
and titillate primeval fear

with hunting talk - imagined scenes -
the Inuit tracker's matchless skill;
his quarry cornered, savage, wild;
the swift, uncompromising kill...

But can their minds encompass all
that harsh horizon's ache of blue -
the spindrift blown on bitter winds,
the long dark days for sleeping through ?

And have they glimpsed in his dull stare
a vision born of Arctic nights,
the Great Bear shining, crisp and clear,
the glory of The Northern Lights ?

Can they not taste the salt-lash sting
of spray between the pack ice floes,
and smell the cold - its sharp-edged blade
that bites as gnawing hunger grows, -

or hear the silence stretching wide
when snow absorbs and muffles sound,
and shifting shapes merge into one -
a moving, melting, hunting ground -

the bleakest habitat on earth,
ethereal in twilight's thaw,
where silver landscapes drift away
and Nature's red in tooth and claw ?

Faint images, long-etched in blood,
and lingering like stains within
the ursine hollow of his bulk -
this monument of bone and skin.

In death he rears, his spirit fled
beyond the reach of manmade schemes,
and prowls alone his vast domain -
the great white wasteland of his dreams.