Flying home over Hudson Bay

We are all fictions up here,
sucked from one culture into the next.
In my bag, five dreamcatchers,
a medicine man's bent twig wheel
hung with dried healing herbs
reminding me of distant ghettoes.

A carved shark's tooth conjures
the beloved Inuit among ice floes
banished to a frozen island,
sniffing petrol to unlearn
the white edged trails of seals.
'They gave us a drum but we dare not dance.'

Wolves howl on calendars,
snow wastes stretch on table mats.
Quilted potholders shriek their message
from small towns drowning in craftwork,
where all winter they have woven wreaths
and stuffed pot pourri into plastic balls.

Down there the Inuit trek to the city,
ice fragments melting in their hair,
hunt caribou in McDonald's,
hang owl skulls in subways
where bones are not honoured,
worship whales in glass cases.

Snapping shut the catch on the seat tray,
I dare to glance towards the sea,
to icebergs, grey and shadowless,
and far beneath stare fleeing ghosts,
caught in echoing ice slabs,
locked in whale rib prisons.

© 2005 Rita Ray