Wrack of kelp split by keel,
sea cleaved like green mangoes.
Through the sloughing wave the boy
guides the skin boat. The island squats
on gray haunches, shuffling its feet

He’s been searching for whales,
counting spouts, the blows
of spent air from dark lungs
holding the sea out. The boy
grasps the paddle, not the death.

He pulls the boat up the sea,
waves inclined to suffering,
rakish as Calvary.
Questions line the shore
like oystercatchers, red legs probing.

Last night he saw the fisherman
rocked by waves, pulling the fish in,
leaning too far into the sea. In the morning
he found the boat covered in weeds.
Now, he paddles the long swells.

Under the kelp the answers lie.
Shells swoon beneath the surface.
A gray whale spouts,
the plume a hollow chant. There are songs
from which no word flows,

psalms the seas hold silent.
Along the shore the boy approaches arctic tern,
marbled godwit, ancient murrelet.
They hold their ground,
dare each other to wince.

In the half light of Arctic spring, mushrooms
grow beneath the ribcage bones of dead reindeer.
We misunderstand what really matters.
What’s important gets lost, like moments
you’d relive, or perfect children who wander
away one day— never heard from again.

You take a call at night thinking
it’s just another solicitation.
It’s a friend who tells you his parents,
who were out walking, were hit by a car.
Mom dies two days later, dad lives twenty-eight,
and he can’t think, but wasn’t he supposed
to judge some children’s poetry Monday night
at your house for a nature contest, he can’t remember.

And so the childrens’ river poems will get read
by a new judge, and the winners will get to dress up
and go with their parents to the Grange
to win free flyfishing lessons.
In time your friend returns to town
and sits in the back row listening to the children read

but he’s too busy watching the parents
to notice you’re watching him, and it’s spring,
and poetry month, and in the half light of the tundra,
pregnant reindeer, searching for mushrooms,
paw the ground, disconnect bones,
inter their ancestors.