I is for Igloos - an Alaskan poem

R.G. Cantalupo

IGLOO

Perhaps merely the idea of whiteness draws us,
the way the white lines, the fissures of ice, the made structure itself disappears inside

the silent depths. Or perhaps the way the wind dies down to a muffled growl as we slip inside the white skin of bear, the belly of the moon.

Or the way we are left then with only language,
our voices heard in the white dome of the cosmos,
our stories flickering in the fire; left with merely

these shadows written on the walls of snow.
Here, the trick of permanence. There, the illusion
of stilled water, the gift of holding river and storm

quiet in the rough texture of our hands. No day
now. No night. The vast turquoise sky not changing
to a black mask pricked with eyes. Out of the flames

gods come, spirits, ghosts bearing visions and old battles. Out of the white nothing, we create the living light, the universe of blood, a new world.

–from Rattle #26, Winter 2006