I wake to barren lands, vast, ever-reaching,
The quiet of the tundra, deep and unfeeling
My paws press against the soft white caps
They are stained with brown and the frozen grass
The ferns and heather, lichen of bogs green
Are flashes of color against the icy sheen
Fragile, undisturbed, the land of the midnight sun
Ravaged by the newcomers, the new weather unwelcome
Deep layers of verdant life frozen in time
Melt under the warm winds, releasing the airs of a past life
Low rolling hills, dotted with falling white
Hidden among valleys, dormant flowers among burrows alive
The antlers of the caribou, as they clip clop across the ice
A perch for snowy owls, screeching for the rushing ermine
Artic willows in blanketing hues
A soft mossy bed for my cubs of few
We hide in the bleached land as it recedes each day
Away from your mines, your rigs and village ways
Our white coats no longer match the gray land
The warm sun has leached the snowy peaks, our cliffs no longer stand
When artic terns swoop down from the summer sky
They are met with ashen emptiness of the warming times
Our hunting grounds are small and bare
We starve in whipping winds, petrichor filled air
The juniper marshes, trodden by the animals from the south
Who escape to our cold dry grounds
The Inuit tribes who depend on our icy home
Barely survive on the transforming coast
They hunt, they fish, they live along our side
But they are crashing as the snow cover dies
Their centuries of life among the Arctic sleet
Are slipping away, changed as the ice retreats
You come to our shores, to trade, to mine
But when there is nothing on the ice, what will you find?
Amongst the slivery islands of the northern reach
I wait, for help, for changed policies
Do you pity the polar bear, alone in the frost?
Hunting amidst the new landforms, scared and lost?
For without the icy slush I repent
It is not me that suffers
But the earth, unbalanced
The changing gales, the permafrost anew
A million of your homes.
Are in as much danger as I am too.
