Their shambling power and verisimilitude,
their mimetic resemblance to souvenir Yuletide
snowstorm paperweights in which we discover
our tiny selves shoveling silver glitter,

or scrimshawed whale's teeth, or
ships-in-bottles, or breath-fogged mirrors,

fanciful, delimited, craft-wise, time-bound,
toothsome and foredoomed as mastodons
crossing the tundra page by page
through the last ecstatic blizzard of the Ice Age.