From Where I Stand - Iqaluit

From Where I Stand - Iqaluit

5 May 2020

jp

I look across your bay

I see horizons

Of ice and rock and distance and even eternity.

I look down I see yellow blue silver walls

I see blue silver red rooves

Down far enough away, houses like a toy set.

I took my first trip there years ago

Now  I see not much has changed

So much nowhere people to be seen.

Sure a person wanders by

In a dimension not yours

I am invisible

Reach out my hand to touch

Worlds and words so far apart my fingers disappear in the aether.

The gossamer soul dissolves before my eyes.

Even my own people, a loose definition

White, educated, speaking English only

We have colleagues to reach toward, embrace

But the bones crackle if you squeeze too hard

Skin slips away if you get too close

Their dimensions are denser at times

Then dissolve like tinkling broken stars falling through darkness

And now I remember not one name with whom I  then worked and met.

So this time round

I climb the hill alone

And wander across the barrens

Where the birds and plants and fear of bear

Breathe in my life and I in theirs

Immediate saturation

Humming satisfaction

Life force sated…

From where I stand – Iqaluit.