by Steve Hellyard Swartz
She loves the unborn
She loves to kill
She loves to fight
She loves being white
And the long long summer days which up there pass for night
She loves a bucket of blood
And long long draughts of water cold as ice
She loves Alaska
And would never ever go
If 18 million cracks in the floor she called home
Hadn't flung her into waters she had never known
She loves life
So much so that she swims for seven days and seven nights
Until she can swim no more
Until
(as is reported by the people in copters above the warming waves who are tracking the death of polar bears)
Until the very end of her life
When she goes down and doesn't come back up
As long day becomes longer night
Steve Hellyard Swartz is a regular contributor to NewVerseNews, Best Poem, and Haggard and Halloo. His poetry has been published in switched-on guttenberg and The Kennesaw Review. In 2008, he won Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, an honor he also received in 2007. He will soon be published in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review. In 1990, his film "Never Leave Nevada", opened in Dramatic Competition at the U.S. Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
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