Colin Simms
The Great White Bear
Observe will you, out of this snowblind
the man kind whom we must unkind
shamble deceptively quickly at him
though we are sluggish yet, fresh from the den
dazed a bit after winter
Still loose is your costume? Hair-shirt
at dress-rehearsal
headswing to pick up fear, sea-breeze
man and bear both hesitant
after the long night, comedy-chuckles
gulping gutters.
All bear-kind repeat tyrranosaur-walking
maybe not meant thus, that long ago
even this men have lost awareness of
when he throws his front paws up, though
something signals, is it ‘instinct’
lowering into the easiest amble, the joy
anticipation at the messages of f breath
the hunger rings.
Dog like, but not even the wolf rumbles the avalanche so far
ahead of
his coming.
Decades before, one surfaced Harpoon-fjord, tenacious of life
even to have penetrated the Djup: took hundreds of bullets,
dozens of harpoon thrusts until the fishermen roped and
suffocated him of their own souls grumbling: sudden is never
sharp enough, quick enough, still not final stuff.
Page(s) 171
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The