saffron scattering

here’s a poem by michele that would make us search our souls – evocative and enigmatic.

the tundra is vast,
summer’s life teeming, greening,
sliding softly to autumn, sunset’s sleep, warm and red;
and suddenly, swift, white, and silent — all covered with snow,
with darkness and ice, from the fall through the windswept and long winter night;
a beautiful landscape, graced, when spring arrives, with a beautiful sunrise,
of cold gold and red…

and polar bears dwell, in the harshest of times, red pulses of life,
burrowed deep in the snow,
warm and safe, power and fragility, love flowing,
sustaining as milk given from mother to cubs,
until she must venture, courageous steward, forth, in the spring,
but no life has been found there in any form that we know;
to find food in the bay,
where fish and seals swim,
life renewing…

they say Mars, the red planet,
is a great, frozen tundra,
some envision a warming,
to bring Earth’s life to Mars
freeing trapped water, and,
luxurious, fecund
in the greens of lush fields,
and balm of red light, sweet, warm, and swift, from the sun…

is that one of the reasons it seems no one is looking
as the tundra on Earth melts,
with the glaciers, and poles,
every spring when the sun shines
over ice, over snow?
its red, warning rays to bask, and to glow,
… or will global warming create on Earth a red planet,
tundra — frozen, and windswept,
red above,
dead below?

©michele baron

Painting by author. 

author avatar
Michele Baron
World-traveller, Fulbright Scholar, author, visual/performance artist Michele is again relocating after having lived 3 years in Central Asia. Itinerant developer of outreach projects, seeker of knowledge, writer of poetry, prose, and non-fiction. Sometimes she reads aloud for audiences, and occasionally she receives recognition, such as “International Ambassador of the Word” and “Ambassador of the Spanish Word” from the Egido Delgado Serrano Foundation, and a Citation for Contributions to the Arts from Maryland General Assembly

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