Things that Have Nothing
     to Do with Adoration

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Mottled gray and gold

through alders dense —

like a wreath, scapular,

her garland of reversal.

A garment in bias cut

corners the woman

I was

          to have become,

whose hipbone juts

just so, traced and splayed

like brambles bent

          to a wooden floor.

Bone unfurled, unfurling.

Sea as heavy as pencil lead,

ice from shore to shore as leads

draw together, subsuming

something smudged out.

Glassy as seal oil. Surface

hoar collapses, collapsing.

Imaaġruk

          only a word between us.