Just beyond the taiga,
between it, actually,
and the still frost flats
where the sun's not worth the effort,
hunched figures war.

Snow-drowned,
silent,
stubbornly alive.

Each upward inch
and mote of soil skirmished for
across centuries, sleeplessly,
warmth forgotten
by their mother earth.

But this stooped, this
half-dead unruly thing
remembers.