Hills of rust,
ochre, grey, black, and white
where the wind
sweeps unimpeded
and the sun
relentless beats
with no shade
or windbreak.
Caribou drift
like shadows
across plateaus
and watch,
press their
timeless tracks
on the gravel
table-land and the stone hills.
A chilly current
sweeps across a rocky bed,
through gorges
and rapids, and sparkles
under a clear
blue sky like lapis, campanula--
but lours in
the windswept rain and fog.
This land is
easy to get lost in.
One loses scale,
an inch is thirty feet, or miles.
The hills and
ponds roll on--
and only the
river flows to the sea.
Land of death,
stone, and caribou bones
where somehow,
something green clings
to a rock or
crevice--
and graves are
piles of rocks
at best.
Their journal in a woodstove,
land like this
claimed Hornby, Adlard, and Christian,
lost Franklin
and his men. Al Purdy was here,
played piano*,
and lived, and Mowat?
Ice crystals
crackle beneath my feet
on the way to
lapis lazuli and mica,
and where the
snow has just melted
winter still
grips the tundra.
The crunch of
lichens on the gravel table-land,
caribou droppings
everywhere, antlers,
reindeer moss.
Bonsai outdone,
a garden at
my feet, no higher than my shoes:
Arctic heather,
arctic cotton, dwarf willow, and clumps of caribou hair,
arctic fireweed,
avens, wintergreen, mouse-ear
chickweed, and
lemmings scamper....
while overhead
the falcon dives.
This land takes
me back ten million years,
to life on Mars,
or Europa, to the moon.
That life, its
tender-toughness could cling
in the face
of scouring winds, searing sun, and
planing ice,
boggles the mind,
amazes my feet.
knee frozen or
numb against the icy
side of the
canoe, kneeling.
And kneeling
to gaze with awe
At the gardens
of Lilliput.
Black lichens
paint the stones--
simple as an
Amish farm
wagon; the life
that's here
begins a minimalist
food chain.
Birches and
willows creep
on the tundra,
driven down to
such humility
by what Calvinist wind?
The People here
five thousand years
pressed on with
simple tools
of stone and
caribou bone.
To love this
land is to love simplicity
unadorned--
and minimalist
art, Mondrian,
Japanese stone
gardens, haiku,
moss campion,
or a single chestnut, polished.
That cry of the
falcon in the sky
over that hill
is faint
when the wind
is down,
but when the
wind blows we huddle
like creeping
birch among the rocks,
when it blows
we all huddle
like creeping
birch among the rocks.
but when the
wind swirls its knife
it roars among
the darkened stones
and carves upon
the ice.
In this long
night
the sky leans
close, waits
for aurora to
draw the curtains.
From a distance
the spot
could have been
a mine
entrance, a
great cavern in the hill,
but, closer,
as the wings of myth beat
about its bleak
entrance, souls like bats
seem to sweep
in and out in the Arctic dusk;
dark curves
recline against the rose sky
like coals dying
in the ashes of a pyre.
But no Inuit
professes knowledge
of this black
mole on the side of the hill.
They only travel
in winter, they say,
and snow sweeps
across the ridges,
drifts on the
slopes,
obscures whatever
truth lies there
of mythic stones
in darkened hills--
so they say.
So they say.
And when I asked
about drums
I was told they
never used them, yet
in Iqaluit I
saw a great stone carving
of an Inuit
drummer. In Kimmirut the Anglicans
came in 1909
and built a church, and razed
the edifices
in their minds, banned drums,
and myths and
all except their own.
Banned all except
their own.