Peace

PEACE Bergs dot the ocean, even in June, and Thick fogs clothe the Labrador shore early each morning. The sea ice rocks slowly in the harbor from wind and sun. As I roast my fish on the warming gravel beach The air grows clear and crystalline for miles to the horizon And I hear only The seagull cries Over the lone level water And tumbling streams laughing their way over mossed boulders old as time, Streams known only to me and the fish. We know the splendor of the yellow arctic poppy in bloom in the long days of July, The wild goose arrowing south high above the shore before the sun-dogs of October, And the incandescent rainbow of the aurora in bloom in January. Polar bears hunt ringed seals along the coast, whales call in the bay, And caribou herds migrate to their calving grounds among The ankle-deep turf of tundra with mushrooms in an abundance of sizes and colours, Bilberry, red mountain cranberry, and crowberry, which bears graze in late summer. There is life here - and pristine growth, primeval and pure. I need only a simple cabin - black spruce for walls and white birch bark for roof, And a boat - and my trap line mended. And I shall have peace here Among the evening green and white of this cold coast With unnamed summer streams running warm into unnamed bays and hidden coves Between high cliffs rising straight from the sea, Their wind- and wave-scoured faces looking straight east over the foggy Atlantic.