PRESENTING

ARTIC VISIONS:

POETRY AND IMAGES OF

A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

LEONOR ANTHONY POETRY

ROBERTO POLILLO IMAGES

ARTIC WARRIOR You cannot die here Or be born here Circle of life arrested Ashes to ashes, dust to dust denied No Book of Common Prayer Saints perfectly preserved Suggested destiny manifest By terrestrial magnetism Leave your shoes at the door History of loss Or epitome of future Transparent and vulnerable An improper arrangement Where dying is not allowed Guide me not to kill you Arctic Warrior we are linked For no one is safe from the worst they can do Way up there above the rest A weapon will always be a weapon That stands before the light Great equalizer Magnificent persuader My power made perfect In weakness
Antigua Your name is Ancient but you were Borne in Thorne in 1957 Three beautiful masts Fifty meters of elegant and tall wood Purposefully sailing through the endless transparent And frozen teal Staring at majesty in a blue dress of ice Our unfolding horror In a blue dress of ice Making ice jealous Making all things jealous Looking fearlessly at the consequences Of our endless ingestion We were looking for purpose Looking Not Knowing The recreational outraged Twenty seven came together But completely alone Yet for a moment Inside you We were one race Giving birth To ourselves.
Latitude Thoughts Persistent Incessant Longing Shredding Searing Love Loss Space Occupied Seen Felt Touched Lived Laughed Gone Moments Instants Hours Months Years Voices Sounds Tears Rhythms Rhythms Rhythms Sillence
Colors Our skin a canvas painted by the brush of fate A color chosen not by us But by chance and date And yet it shapes our lives And the way others respond But as we go through life We have a choice to make To let our skins define us Or to pick another shade And we choose the colors we wear As if to say, this is who I am Or better yet This is who I want you to see From the beauty of our souls To the depth of our despair We choose the color You just respond Form the boldness of the reds You may think of me as brave From the calmness of the blues The color of the morning sky You may think Im ruled by thought But don’t for a second forget That this is the skin I choose to wear You just respond For though our skin may have a color too It does not define us whole Or the stories we want to believe And the ones yet to be told
Thin Little Lines Like colors that swirl and bend A tapestry woven from beginning to end Of all we have seen and all we have lived Memories are stored in thin little lines The moments of joy, the moments of wonder The days filled with laughter, the starkness of fear The deepening silence, the taste of our tears The smell of the sea, the sound of a bird Uncommon cold crispness of unspoiled air That seared the lungs raw only to leave them Asking for more Memories are stored in thin little lines They shape who we are and who well become A living legacy of all we’ve seen And done They are part of us now, our guiding light north Reminding to strive, to seek and to find Always reminding us why we tried The shared understanding that made our hearts sing The shared understanding of what We have seen Memories are stored in thin little lines
Northern Light Like a beacon of hope Understood only by some Northern Light pierces the darkness Pierces the ice Pierces the cold Gentle and soft Grandeur unexpected Dancing across the tundra Like a mystical force Or a natural lover It paints the sky in shades unimaginable Casts a spell on the lonely land A dance of light and darkness Of white and black And everything And everyone A balance so perfect only found Where there are so very few to behold Like a saving grace A mantle descending upon your naked soul Caressing your inner being With its beauty so extreme yet At times violent Rivers of fire in the sky Ghostly rays of brilliant white Rendering you inarticulate Light eternal Piercing light Mighty light of the north Even in your darkness moment Grays of silver You become But never fully gone
X Tree The forests are cleared, The birds all do flee A strange sight to behold The lonely ex-tree on the shore You've traveled so far Transported by tides From where you stood strong To where never a tree was born Lonely ex-tree on the shore Once so proud now left forlorn No branches reaching for the sky No sign left Former grace erased Your fate decided And from you No reply only silence Neither sun or eternal night The future has nowhere to hide Still, alone and forgotten Broken in a frozen crowd Lost to the hands of man A tree forever gone In an island of stumps For when we take without thought We leave behind a tragic seed
Glacier Unforgettable Inarticulate sound So strange you roar Incessant laments And muffled screams I thought you dormant Or maybe dead So wrong I was Falling walls of frozen and eternal teal in motion No winds or currents to blame But amputations of you Creating your own Waves of ice Waves of you Triumph of a forgone conclusion I thought you dormant But It was you
In Gratitude I search for words far and wide In peoples language, books and tablets Longinus tried in the time of Jesus Referring to words spoken by men But he did not see your face They spoke of pleasures of the imagination They painted Wanderers Above the Sea Fog Horrors and harmonies they speculated Delight consistent with reason But did they see your face, Suspended by a multitudes of colors And cloud surges? Burke said you were mutually exclusive Light accentuating your beauty A gold sliver like a crowned monarch a flecking scud of fire But when the mischievous light is gone The absence of it makes you even more powerful For it cannot annihilate the vision of you Or your spiritual transcendence Sight of such magnitude The noble, the splendid and the terrifying Numinous and Tremendous Unbounded, unlimited My own fears forgotten By your superior might Palace of fragmented ice Your solemn beauty A judgement to humankind I stand before you in gratitude With love that has not speech for need For I have seen your face. -Leonor Anthony