I just keep writing them...
“The Arctic Ate My Father”
What, to a little boy
Touselled hair
Hopeful eyes
A dreaming, questing heart
Does 'heritage research' signify?
Grey-green soapstone carvings
Little plastic flags from
Territories distant
Photographs, men in parkas
A frozen sea, prefab homes
Names rich with familiarity
Of which most remain ignorant
Baffin Island, Yellowknife
A new place we call Nunavut
A home for the people
Reclamation of sovereignty
But father won't explain
Didn't, at least
So a little boy remained
Oblivious, to things
Important, to a few
The Arctic ate my father
When I was but a child
Jaws of ice and snow and
Polar bears bounding across tundra
As he breaks for the helicopter
People for whom the seals
The snow and caribou are life
Adapting to foreign ideas, foreign world
These things devoured my father
Leaving me far, far south
Knowing little of that windswept place
Land of the midnight sun
But now the people won their land
And father's work is done
Archives grasp my father
Draw him into a papery maw
To bleed to death from paper cuts
Or exhaustion, ceaseless research
And I?
Not left behind at least but
Poring over musty tomes
Hands bound, wafer-thin cloth gloves
Studying, struggling, learning
Alongside my father
Devoured by the Arctic no more
What, to a little boy
Touselled hair
Hopeful eyes
A dreaming, questing heart
Does 'heritage research' signify?
Grey-green soapstone carvings
Little plastic flags from
Territories distant
Photographs, men in parkas
A frozen sea, prefab homes
Names rich with familiarity
Of which most remain ignorant
Baffin Island, Yellowknife
A new place we call Nunavut
A home for the people
Reclamation of sovereignty
But father won't explain
Didn't, at least
So a little boy remained
Oblivious, to things
Important, to a few
The Arctic ate my father
When I was but a child
Jaws of ice and snow and
Polar bears bounding across tundra
As he breaks for the helicopter
People for whom the seals
The snow and caribou are life
Adapting to foreign ideas, foreign world
These things devoured my father
Leaving me far, far south
Knowing little of that windswept place
Land of the midnight sun
But now the people won their land
And father's work is done
Archives grasp my father
Draw him into a papery maw
To bleed to death from paper cuts
Or exhaustion, ceaseless research
And I?
Not left behind at least but
Poring over musty tomes
Hands bound, wafer-thin cloth gloves
Studying, struggling, learning
Alongside my father
Devoured by the Arctic no more