Arctic Dream

Laura Lush
From:   Carapace. (Palimpsest Press, 2011).

Snow-swaddled body flanked by flags,
sun-charred laugh, the barely-stitched-together

wind. Then the single tusk of a narwhal
surfacing, a ship dynamited free from its winter

grave. Its sleek hull bludgeoning ice floe
after ice floe. Huddled into night fortresses,

numb to the grieving of snow dogs. Sometimes
a noise rises from the depth of tundra---

neither animal nor human. A sound like chewing
of carrion, the spit-back of bones twitching

the night air. It is saying he will come back,
swell like the din of a thousand drums beating

the Arctic into deafened ears.

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