For Tom Thomson

    I have thrust my fists
    up to ice in the
    galactic mire of lake,
    lured my minnow wriggler
    eyes as bait to ensnare
    inroads, lake bed wreaths,
    across the windchill spine of
    brooding heart.

    I am on the essence of the North
    where latitudes of cold spontaneity
    remind me the nameless lakes
    part not easily with their secrets.

    A man's bones go easily to rot
    in the frigid perspiration
    called primeval ooze,
    precambrian sweat,
    the tertiary stage syphilitic crawl
    of advancing ice.

    All those terms your detractors, analyzers,
    devotees coin to define you: the Boreal,
    taiga, subarctic steppes, white hell,
    recoil under the onslaught, the lustrate message straining
    up alkaline clear.

    Water is your blood.
    A vast hoarding, most of this
    planet's fresh drink
    is flushed through your
    bowels, with kidneys
    separating the renic
    qualities as snow and
    sleet, the night side of
    your character.

    Tom, son of Thomson fame,
    his little canoe immeshed
    as scrubbed floorboards now,
    a giant winnowing such scattered
    firewood over a slow crop of
    putrefying muck; perhaps
    I see your eyes
    as sturdy bubbles
    popping from legions
    of green liquid
    to carouse with your
    firm memory.