North: a winter poem from Canada

NORTH
Past industrial heartlands
And prairie farms
Out on the Great River
Where the air is calm

A bold December moon
Shines down through black spruce
And in the distance
Roams a lonely moose

Ice is thickening
On the water below
As a snowmobile revs
And there’s a wintery glow

Lights dance nimbly
In the northern sky
Ghosts, grey and green
Echo their cry.

© J. Ashley Nixon 2014

Aklavik is a small Arctic community in the Northwest Territories, where this poem was written when working on the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline project (with thanks to my colleague Kim for taking the photo).

Dog sledding in the Yukon

Snow shovelling (in Alberta here) is another favourite winter pastime.

For more images of winter in Canada, see J. Ashley Nixon Photography