FUR TRAPPER

I zip swiftly along on my snow machine,
admist a white blanket with spots of green,
my trapline runs along this stretch,
Alaskan cold makes smoke of breath.

The snowpack has been good this year,
goes a little way to allaying my fears,
but who knows what’s in the traps I set,
too early to count my dollars yet.

The first trap I find quite empty,
so I drive to the next, hoping to see…
A Marten!  Yes!  That’ll bring in cash,
he goes in the bag, then I’m off in a flash

I have many more long miles to go
across this bitter, cold, sub-arctic snow.
Some wonder why I come up north
where wolves are literally at my door.

Why do I make cash in this old way,
and in a tiny cabin have to stay
for three months out of every twelve,
away from my wife, and daughter, Isabelle.

I think then of ‘normal’ office work,
with gossiping cowokers, and a boss/jerk,
stuck every day in the same routine,
answering calls, staring at a screen,

Stuck in a cubicle, dull and beige,
waiting only for the day I get paid.
That’s what they same is normal, right?
How I’m ‘supposed’ to go about my life?

A life of punching clocks and paying bills,
if that’s what life is, give me the chill!
Out here my office is endless miles
of sculpted beauty and manly trials.

Never know what’s coming the next day,
be in caribou, wendigo, or snowstorm’s gray,
to me there is something to all that,
so I push onward to my next trap…

Look!  Another Marten!  Awesome.