Tundra Quotes

“Dream of the Tundra Swan

Dusk fell
and the cold came creeping,
cam prickling into our hearts.
As we tucked beaks
into feathers and settled for sleep,
our wings knew.

That night, we dreamed the journey:
ice-blue sky and the yodel of flight,
the sun's pale wafer,
the crisp drink of clouds.
We dreamed ourselves so far aloft
that the earth curved beneath us
and nothing sang but
a whistling vee of light.

When we woke, we were covered with snow.
We rose in a billow of white.”
― Joyce Sidman, Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

“The intensity of my grief hits the mountains across Eclipse Sound, and then echoes throughout Arctic. There’s nobody around. I can barely see the town below the hill, nestled within the valley of barren tundra, across from the tiny airport, my only access to the south. I’m alone amidst this desolate landscape and there’s nowhere to hide. No trees or buildings or distractions. It’s just me in the depths of my suffering and all my faults and mistakes of the past are exposed underneath the spotlight of the midnight sun.”
― Shannon M Mullen, See What Flowers

“One dark night, a venomous serpent slithered through the shadows, stinging Klugonus, and although the gods made him immortal, he could feel himself dying. It was painful, and more than flesh and blood can bear. He knew he would never recover, and so the angels granted him a place in the stars, and when it shines its brightest, you know it’s him, crying from the excruciating pain.”
― Marilyn Velez

“In the measure of a day, I heard the music play, and from afar, I watched its beauty unfurl. Its burbling streams, I heard. Its crinkled leaves, I saw. Its salted air whirled against grasses’ virescent and tall, and from a distance, the birds carried a tune, of a dance I knew.”
― Marilyn Velez

“If moving on a fast foot, one would hardly notice, but for the limpers like myself, one noticed many things. And on that eve, I noticed a myriad of things that on a regular day, my eyes would not see. Souls of men whose faces all never meet another patch of light, touch grass, or raise a ripe melon to their face, isolated from the rest of the world. That’s when I knew our time was fleeting.”
― Marilyn Velez, Tundra: The Darkest Hour