ARCTIC DUSK 

                 in memoriam , Sylvia Plath 

Perhaps it is hard to grasp why one might clasp

the warm comfort of a cold appliance  

and inhale its luxuriate Eden  

heedless of the chilling eternity  

confronting two small beings  

left to discover toast and tepid milk  

by warm and tousled beds,  

But no mother.

Yet each day it becomes more clear. 

You wake some metallic morning  

to a frigid stare like the eye of dusk 

all but sunk in some arctic outback  

and sense the one-way ticket  

crumpled in the velvet vest of a chest  

in which you once swam 

like the most accomplished 

of aquateers.

But still – Sylvia, Sylvia, -- you bitch!  

Not only those children, but the rest of us 

stranded here alone, too afraid, too strong, 

too good, or all of it -- earthbound without you, 

your blasting beacons, their dead-on rays -- 

how could you abandon our clammy hands to just  

another dawn's decay?

C Julianza Shavin 2008