Prepare
To lend tea bags, halibut hooks,
your dry floor to a stranger.
To work with hands
that break out in welts,
spend weeks without
books or butter.
In December
when the man you live with
takes the skiff to town,
he may not be back.
Hang the deer in a tree.
Keep the lamps lit.
Carry your rifle everywhere.
On the Tundra
We saw the sow and her cub
running along the cliff,
away from the sound of the outboard,
and slept badly, thinking of the gun
that jammed, the wife who had to shoot
to save her husband,
the crewman who came back from a walk,
his left eye bleeding, right arm bitten off.
But we needed food,
carried our rifles across grass
worn through by years of paws.
On the path lay pebbles
bears shit out months ago,
eating an otter or seal.
Wind stripped us down
to our walking scent,
strong as the ocean's,
a texture to our flesh
only the bears' teeth could know.
I imagined them watching,
eyes powerful as our scopes.
Ahead, the cliff, comorants
shrieking up and down its face.
We hiked all afternoon.
Deer trails stopped without warning
in clumps of spruce, as if
at the end of a long walk
the animals turned into trees.
Morgue
Each body is a blue carnation
in a long white box
odorless
as florist-cooled flowers.
They glow
in their greenhouses of flesh
as if lit miles
below the surface
by rose lamps.
Their veins are moths
frozen in that light.
Sound proofed
surrounded by dials
the dead drift
between grief
and earth.
