The Teams of Winter's Other Games

The Teams of Winter’s Other Games
Celebrating the sled dogs of the Iditarod
By: Greg Asimakoupoulos

While the teams have left Vancouver
with their medals and gone home,
we can’t forget the other Games
and the teams that mush for Nome.

I mean those teams who pull a sled
along a windswept trail,
those on a “gold rush” of their own
in blinding snow and hail.

They test their mettle in the cold
beneath a silvery moon
while bronze-furred parkas warm the bones
of mushers night and noon.

These teams do not give interviews
or weep when anthems play.
They simply race to reach their goal
and hear their master say,
“Well done!”

Greg Asimakoupoulos (pronounced AWESOME-ah-COPE-ah-less) is an ordained minister, freelance writer and newspaper columnist. He and his wife, Wendy, have three daughters and live on Mercer Island, Washington. Greg contributes poetry to the website partialobserver.com each Friday that he likens to “political cartoons comprised of word pictures.”