Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

1.

We rise slowly up rock face in the rain,
sudden sharp edges make precise
my bouncing fear of falling
steel flywheels and cables drag us
          up Whistler Mountain or down Hell's Gate
Is this as high as the one in Rio?
          I dread the anecdotes of another tourist
          plump, perfumed, packed against me in the crowded car

2.

Where are the bears?
I paid $3,000 to come here with my family and I haven't
seen a bear!
          they rush through the Cascades and Rockies
past wooden and brass
monuments to map-makers
and the barely wild things
and are still awed by the height of peaks
and the girth of slopes
between the pancake restaurant and
Next Washrooms 12Km

3.

giggle scamper giggle scamper
car to campsite, wear your sweater
          nicotine fingers dip into the moraine
ice around morning emerald water
this is the origin of forest green

cold wind and creeks ripple
the news: otter nest in progress
osprey shadows overhead
snaking soft sliver of dreaming river

4.

while trucks loaded with stripped logs roar by
a letter to the editor complains that rubber-necking
on the Icefields Parkway will cause accidents, slow the pace
of industry
and plunge British Columbia into recession
fewer and fewer soft slopes of lodge pole pine,
forest edge blown over like a chunk of pile carpet

5.

ghosts and their descendants crowd the interpretative centre
at Frank, Alberta where ten times a day the avalanche
replays
the miners' folly
death by technology
revelations in geology

6.

the helicopter carries a bear in a net,
drugged and bound for a distant range because a teenager
offered it an ice cream cone
the video includes an elder native's voiceover:
the spirit of the bear has left this land
          the bear knew well enough to bite the hand
that fed it                          and make its getaway

7.

the binoculars are no use after all
below the peak, hundreds scramble
to not step on fragile flowers
in the alpine meadow
          it's crush or be crushed
snow covered, rain shrouded
          admirable views of Jasper
          and ahead are the paths
          of silence, disappearance
then a man on a cellular phone asks
          what's new at the office?