In my dream I am walking
on the edge
of the world. No!
Not some idea
about the edge of the world.
But actually where half
the planet
has sloughed away.
Calved.
A jökulhlaup.
The quiet is very thick, almost
fatty. A warm tide of salty
wind streaming up
from nothing.
Somewhere a noise
like whales pinging
each other, wails and long sirening
through water fathoms and fathoms deep.
Yes. The sound of mother whales, calving.
So it’s not an apocalypse.
Not like Qikiqtark.1
Flat layers
of rock
on permafrost.
Endless ice and the flit flit flit flitting no-sound
of Thule people.
Long ago melted.
In streams of slick yellow oil.
Slushing off those last Bowhead Whales
of the Beaufort Sea.
Star-shaped splatters, constellations
of blood and blubber
under the feet of men
all dressed in wool
up to their elbows
in slabs of skin, flenching.
Baleen is a lacy comb.
Feathered bone.
The edge swallowing.
1 Inuit name of what is now more commonly referred to by non-Inuit peoples as Herschel Island.
