What is it that lies inert in the crystal gauges
that are the compasses for explorers setting forth?
The earth cools and lies forlorn for wistful ages,
crystalline structures aligned with North,
leaving, in its heart, evidence in layered crystal pages
that justifies South’s suspicion that North loves North!

The lodestone is pointing to what it does not know.
The heart pursues what that heart would not let go.

It is a parody of paradox and travesty, a mute but tragic tale
of what crushes stone rigidity to weightless dust
despite the chin-thrusting promontory of satire in ironic jail,
a penitentiary of brick and bar of elemental lust
where freeze and thaw work their will until the rock is frail
and periodic rains turn even iron hearts to rust.

And yet, in the mineral, through some chemistry of chance,
jewels are produced in which an inorganic light may dance.

Mistaken North misguides us when he confidently beckons
with a chill wind from the surface of his icy cap
and, in the shimmering polar lights, the presence of South reckons
nearer than we know she is from the global map,
so by ice-age minute-hands he counts the ages, if not the seconds,
until he will hold her in his blue-white moonlit lap.

But South is not to the glacial heart attracted and bides her time –
she longs for North to melt her white heart into willingness sublime.