Just half an hour, the narrator explains,
until the tide returns. I watch the hunters
work to pierce an aperture, human-sized,
in the ocean's crumpled mantle. I watch
them as they slip down into the eerie, blue
hollow. They are undersea now, but there
is no sea there, just barnacle-spotted stones,
furuncle clustering to carbuncle,
marring what smoothness comes of an eternity
spent pressed upon by water. The Arctic's
slanting light glows emerald through ancient
sea-ice. Strands of kelp, stems of bladderwrack
hang like streamers, like tossed bouquets caught
in air, spinning out of time. On the ocean
floor, the hunters hunch, plunging bare hands
into seaweed, feeling for this fortune
worth risking their necks for. Their energy
is fervent, keen: they pick until their fingers
plump and prune, salt-crusted, numbing as they
clatter their mussels into aluminum
pails. Their treasure glistens onyx, bearded
with broken threads that seconds ago held
creature to sea bed. Against the hush,
a tidal sound returns; the hunters' voices
rise, becoming anxious, a little hinky.
Minutes to escape, emerge, head for some
place solid as the water rushes in
with force enough to animate the groaning
slabs of ice, to float them back up forty
feet as though they were not made of crushing
weight. I watch the hunters carry home
their feast, the sky as pink as the soft flesh
waiting in each tight-closed slick, black shell.