Across the Bering Strait

by Alexander Stessin

* * *

Across the Bering Strait
all winters come
with specks of light
and particles of powder
too stark to see
and little in the way
of localizing any higher power.
through the blank language
of Manhattan snow,
its slanted measure of peregrination,
each day
like a mass transit passenger
inches its way
to exit at the station.
so goes the tune
that someone else records
among brick college buildings
and impasses
contrived designs
unevenly lit words
white nights
black mountains
everything that passes.