Lantern

Taki lived beside the whale bone arch at the edge of the Chukchi Sea in Point Hope, Alaska.

The arch is made of two bowhead whale jaw bones planted in the ground, forming a gateway from the land to the water and from the water back to the land.

It whispers quietly to the world, "The Balaenidae mysticetus gives its life to the Iñuit people, and they give their lives back to the bowhead whale."

“Give,” it says.

Her house was made of yellow wooden slats and a red tin roof.

It had four windows.

There was one for each side of the house.

She could see to the north, south, east and west of the Arctic land and sea.

A little chimney rose slightly above the roof's ridge.

Smoke from the evening fire swirled ever so gently into the night.

It thinned itself up and out into the star filled sky.

She sat by the fire in the front room, warming herself against the long night of the deep Arctic winter.

She looked out over the Chukchi Sea.

The water was calm.

Stars reflected off of it like little lights.

Ice floes moved slowly with the tide.

Whales sang to each other.

"Small spaces," she thought, "hold the world together.”

She saw a boy standing under the whale bone arch.

 

The wind blew off the icy sea and whipped his brown face until he looked as if he might become a part of the sand, salt and sea.

 

His shirt and coat weren't enough to protect him from the cold, and the skin of his cheeks and the water in his eyes froze with the sunset.

 

"He looks so small against the sea and the sky," she thought.

Small things struggled to survive around the Chukchi Sea, she knew.

 

Her heart was big and warm.

This helped her live in that cold, icy place.

 

Her kind eyes were as brown as the earth beneath the snow.

This helped her see in that fierce, white land.

 

"I know his heart is big and warm, too," she thought.

She took a lantern out of the window and headed out into the night to guide him in.

- Trevor Scott Barton, Poems For Brown-Eyed Girls, 2022