halo

One hundred miles above the

Arctic circle

So cold the sun

Will fail to even graze

Skin of men bound in iron and chains

Click of light and dark, tracks and ties

Train.

To a string of gulags

Resembling nothing less than

Rough pearls

Which are surely

The opposite of coal

Torn from the frozen chest

By men whose bone-deep desperation 

mix with their fear

As air bleeds out

We all dream of 

of fire 

Archangel

So far beneath the buried heart 

Of this vertiginous stone 

Planet