The bearded seal suns on a floe
while a polar bear stalks it nearby
Biologists say it can smell its prey
up to twenty miles distant
The seal however is deprived
an open-air sense for predators
so it sprawls obtuse and unaware
of awful and white-pawed doom
Yet curiously the bearded one
is equipped with quaint curlicues
at the tips of its quill-like whiskers
Pray but to what purpose
I know there is one as surely
as I know that there is meaning
in the sequel of gore and sinew
which soon punctuates the ice
a period of silence then a pointed
exclamation a colon underlined
in red or two semi-colons perhaps
and myriad questionable marks
Why, then, do I doubt my own?