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Northwest Passage

by John Younger

Radar experts from a carrier

exploring the Arctic icefields,

discover a tableau of death.

A longboat loaded with the lost,

bares one midshipman, almost awake,

while his shipmates sleep, curled up in furs.

Back on the carrier’s flight deck,

the scientists watch a sudden snowstorm

blow in over the polar wasteland

in a furious whirl of flakes,

once more covering up the catafalque

and its unsuccessful travellers.

But when at last global warming

melts the Arctic cryosphere,

that barge of late voyagers

will imperceptibly slip

into the current’s Southward drift

and reach the deep-drowned destination.

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Copyright © 2007 Sentinel Literary Quarterly (SLQ) - an SPM Publications magazine and the authors. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of SLQ content is expressly prohibited without prior written consent of the copyright owners. For reprint rights contact permissions@sentinelquarterly.com SPM Publications is the publishing arm of Sentinel Poetry Movement - The International Community of Writers & Artists...since 2002