Alexei Navalny photographed in Moscow during a police raid on the office of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Freedom is an iron-like flower

by Chris Parsons

(For Alexei Navalny, 1976-2024, lawyer and political dissident, declared dead in a Russian Arctic prison camp.)

on the last walk of your life

you met the polar wolf

the cloud of your breath

snatched by the freezing wind

taken like so many

even with you gone

czars shiver in palaces of ice

thinking of another Spring

when snows finally thaw

when whitewashed coverlets

are flung aside

we will find a million flowers

Christchurch poet Chris Parsons’ work has appeared in Landfall, Blackmail Press and Poetry NZ.