Arctic Rose (...ten years deep)

ARCTIC ROSE

News, cold and lonely as the distant sea,
ran wild, like the midnight lights of winter.
Head down, the words were read aloud to me.
Gone: the Arctic Rose, all hands aboard her.

Those frigid Bering waters are the broth
from which the dreams of hardy men are made.
Some, now, wrapped together in ancient cloth
are filling the ranks of a lost brigade.

(Poems by J.Zimmerman)