Minus Eight At Twenty Below

 
Small town theatre,
thick fur huskies,
ice blue eyes,
casually
tied up at the door.

Narrow room with three hundred
seats on a slanting floor
facing a stage,
the screen is hidden behind
a long blue curtain.

Rock music blares
from theatre speakers
while friends and neighbours
gather and take their seats,
shouting and laughing
to be heard over the music.

Young gaggles of girls
run up and down the aisles,
excitedly skip and twirl laughing
across the stage,,
back and forth dancing
doing cartwheels
or clowny fragments
of ballet.

Everyone is dressed casual
in many light layers
now in the warm theatre
unzipped, unbuttoned,
velcro loop and hook
peeled back like layers
of onion or bark of birch.

Northerners continue to pour
into the room,
they all look happy,
uninhibited and free,
each one undoing his outer layers
of clothes as he walks joyfully
up to a friend or relative.

There is no difference of class
here, as anywhere in the far north.
The millionaire and his wife
snuggle down in  seats
beside the welfare mom
and her kids,
the European with the
quieter and shy native
aboriginals, displaced Americans
British, Australians,
and New Zealanders.

They’ve all come to see a movie,
this one about themselves,
in part using their dogs
cabins and friends as a set,
even the mountain flanks
shoulders and peaks
will be full of memories
and adventures.

The movie is called “Eight Below”,
practically tee-shirt weather,
you can tend the dogs in your pajammas
for five minutes easy at eight below
outside it is twenty below

The curtain rises,
the music ends,
the light dims,
snuggle warm in your seats,
the movie begins.