Story

—“Frozen mammoths have frozen buttercups
between their teeth.” Bill Streever, Cold
After long sleep, after the poultice
of winter—salvation,
like the birth of an eon.

How the rare shrug of the glacier
--the report—exploding between brows
of the valley as if the very dawn
came up like thunder

must have caused loss of hearing
in any number of bovids,

deprived crows and ravens
of their songs.

What of the people, camped in its shade?
Who were the wise among them
who could read the ice,
tell frazil from shish?

Surely the bark of their boats
had the power to speak.

Whisht! Listen.

We stood on the shore, as if at the doorway
to a house no longer standing.

Made our spears and atlatls ready.
Then the hair and the horned
came down to drink and we talked to them.

This is said to have happened.


from Lake Studies: Meditations on Lake Champlain by Daniel Lusk