Today's poem is by Nina C. Peláez

Last Words Written on a Northwest Passage
        after Frederic Edwin Church

In the amphitheater of ice, light sings
its sad blue notes. At the edge, limbs
dissolving into gloam. Without scale,
without weight, I cradle the landscape
in my arms. Red rock, white ice. Clouds
passed like hands over a fevered face.
Snow piles high as ash, soul fledging
from its plot. I long for heat. The bodies
of the living. Horizon rippling pink,
memory of a bed where I was warm.
Pillows cut the sky. In gelid sheets, I sleep
on water. Dream of birds. I walk to where
voices catch the wind. I cannot reach.
Tide drags me by my feet. I yield to it.

Copyright © 2025 Nina C. Peláez All rights reserved
from wildness
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission