Callisto : The Great White Bear Of the North

The Great White Bear Of the North
Eldest of three cubs
Strong in limb
Who smells of wild oysters

Who walked a thousand miles
That day, following the sweet
Scent of seal far off
With her black nose

Seeing white shapes on white plains
Violet white and orange
Suns rose livid mornings
Bright white, with her granite eyes

Lonesome on the ice
Breathing gusts of white
Her pink tongue licks
Her yellow teeth in a grimace

She has walked a thousand miles
On her frying pan paws
Her steely claws kept time
And she has come to the edge

The edge of the white
Meeting the sea
She dives in boldly
She smells blood and swims for life

Now she is a great dog
Paddling through the waves
So bravely
Her nose held stiffly up

On and on she swims
For a thousand miles
Until night falls
Down upon the sea

The night joins the sea
And the wind comes
With wave upon wave
Yet she swims on so strong is she

The night makes a black wave
A silvery shadow rising tall
Falls like the night over this bear
The black falls over the white bear

And the bear falls
Her solid mass relaxed
Fur floating silken grasses
Under salt water liquid metal

Each strand turning to silver
Mercury evanescence
Unfurling through the cavernous black
Past the ice of a thousand ages

Into the hinterland
Where strange luminous creatures glow
And down again farther into the black North
Of silence beneath ten thousand tons of icy salt water

Into the prehistoric light of night
Her white fur is golden
Her still breath the souls, of all our futures
And her claws of diamond, like stars
Make a tear in the void

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this was written in response an article about  polar bears drowning as the ice cap melts