Reindeer are stepping deeper in the bitter moss, <br />Mindless of the little fingers of blue hypnosis; <br />Clutching the smooth stones of the swaying west, <br />Not even the natives remember, as they hunt, <br />The ones who have died here and gone before. <br /> <br />What religion the moon casts onto the antlers’ arc, <br />Across those red stems where felt collects like <br />Calcifying minerals, dusted with the earlier snows; <br />Here is something not even the quiet speaks of, <br />A procession of white throated does, <br /> <br />Their eyes the perception of her unconcerned migrations, <br />Their bellies where the snow clings in tufts and balls, <br />Where the boreal caterpillars cocoon in moist antechambers; <br />When they change it will be too early, and they will freeze <br />Like slips of sunlight joined together in a curse, <br /> <br />And they will fall away from the amber steps of hooves, <br />The unperturbed steady trunks of the horned wanderers, <br />Their kids tugging on the black nipples at their bellies, <br />The orchids of forthright animals, the milk of talc, <br /> <br />And northward where the glaciers climb in ways of deep ruts, <br />Past the splendid death buried in its time, <br />The moments of lucid trinkets sparkling a wonderful mystery <br />Freed of the concerned stems which motivated the restless bodies, <br />Beneath the swaying monuments of vermilion hue, <br />And the breathless curtain pricked by furnaces, keeping pace.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wanderers-4/
