The Ecology of Subsistence: Cathy Rexford

This is Cathy Rexford, and this is part of my poem "The Ecology of Subsistence" from the anthology Scrimshaw.

"On the edge of the open lead, a toggle-head harpoon
waits to launch: bowhead sings to krill.

Thickened pack ice cracking; a baleen fishing line
pulls taut a silver dorsal fin of a round white fish.

A slate-blade knife slices along the grain of a caribou
hindquarter; the ice cellar lined in willow branches is empty.

Saltwater suffuses into a flint quarry, offshore
a thin layer of radiation glazes leathered walrus skin.

Alongside shatters of a hummock, a marsh marigold
flattens under three black toes of a sandhill crane.

A translucent sheep horn dipper skims a freshwater stream;
underneath, arctic char lay eggs of mercury.

Picked before the fall migration, cloudberries
drench in whale oil, ferment in a sealskin poke.

A tundra swan nests inside a rusted steel drum;
she abandons her newborns hatched a deep crimson."