Interregnum - Jan 18 2025

 

Interregnum

Jan 18 2025

Cold and clear.

But it’s a dry cold

and the wind has finally died.

Weather that suits people like me

who find change difficult.

Because there is a reassuring stillness

when dense arctic air

weighs down the earth.

As if we’re on a frozen planet

locked in ice.

Or live in a snow globe

under a dome,

our tranquil diorama

protected by glass.

In the vicissitude of life

an interregnum of time

I can count on.

When I have permission to drift.

When the big decisions

can be safely deferred.

Like in Siberia

where prehistoric animals have been preserved.

Where woolly mammoths

are emerging from the glaciers

as ancient ice retreats,

intact

even as millennia have passed.

And then there’s the man

frozen in the Alps

for over 5000 years;

Otzi

who met a violent death

before his body was interred

in ice.

So will I also face extinction

if I too remain still?

Like a shark

who can’t stop swimming

if it’s to breathe,

a grazing animal

who must forage non-stop

or starve?

Still, some animals

can only survive the cold

in a state of torpor

much like my own;

slowing the heart,

nesting in a sheltered spot,

feeding on fat.

Plenty of time in spring

to resume the pace,

to eat or be eaten

compete for a mate.

But now, it’s a chance to sleep

dream

restore;

to step outside

and take in a vantablack sky

bursting with stars.

“Vantablack” is as black as it gets. Or at last we can get it. Some animals from the lightless ocean depths are actually blacker!

I suspect that may not be true about sharks. But if I look it up, it’ll wreck the poem. Never let a fact get in the way of a good simile!