Great banks of clouds are ramparts in the sky
Of ancient tundra now in transformation,
Where pond-mud cakes in summer’s heat, and ice
Drips from muskeg and glacier. Each a wonder
Of destruction whence a great bear soon will fly:
The eons’ pain, in shaggy white mirage.

With scars and red-glowing eyes, this strange mirage
Prepares for war, its cost higher than the sky,
A war from which no living flesh may fly.
Such terrible strong work wreaks transformation
In heart and soul; replacing childlike wonder
With frigid bleakness of a heart of ice.

Sensing doom in thinning arctic ice,
Now Southern souls seek shelter, not mirage,
Hoarding cash for pure salvific wonder.
They daily look for signs up in the sky
That present woes bespeak a transformation
Which, in its wake, will let their children fly.

Prophecies of doom; from these, most fly
Preferring death by alcohol and ice.
Their style of life forbids all transformation
Save designer clothes, or similar mirage,
With this result: Beneath the turning sky,
They merely live. They’ve no time left for wonder.

But now the bear grows eagle’s wings—a wonder
To behold! See fine-fletched feathers flex to fly!
Through hail and sleet, the bear’s wings ride the sky.
His lips sealed with iron will, his blood like ice
Beneath the fur of this too-cold mirage
That flies above an Earth in transformation.

The bear now rests and yields to transformation
(For quietude’s required in quests of wonder),
Transcends his state of ominous mirage.
On slip-streams and high pressure zones he’ll fly,
And only ever land on earth, not ice.
None can evade his searching from the sky.

In bare, blue sky, one cloud’s in transformation;
Once vapor, now its ice becomes a wonder—
A bear to fly forever as mirage.