ALYS JACKSON

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Tilted Winter

The Earth leans away from the sun,
tilted into winter,
skimming the day with fog and ice,
to hard-rime the larch
in shades of filtered grey.

The wolves are close,
their tracks lie mellow in the snow,
straight in line and clean.
Not a dog’s.
Their chorus shedding loose the night
—shaking free the moon.

Beside the lake a reindeer hangs its antlers
from the underbelly of a pine,
others sniff out lichen and stud the path
with a subtle reassurance.

The woman stands beside them,
her living lynched to theirs. Evenki woman,
reindeer herder and whisperer of the wilderness;
Beyond the valley, her men are hunting;
baited and cocked. Chasing wolf packs
across snow-marbled mountains
to the hum of the Northern Lights
in absinthe and pink-lady gin.

Most will escape.
The dead are flayed,
their crimson-corpses see-sawing into a rising dawn,
their pelts to fashion the furless skin
of the West.

Occasionally, the woman will see a silhouette,
wolf-ghosts backlit by starlight,
heirs to an uncertain future,
spectral survivors
of an uncertain night.