Prince William Sound, Alaska
Like fat on a kettle of cold soup, ice
rides the calm Sound surface. Ice on ice.
An eagle lifts off a high spruce—
dives—and in the binoculars, blood on the ice.
Car-size chunks and towering bergs
jostle and clunk together like ice
cubes in a glass of cold gin. Green cove in the offing.
And the ship’s steel hull cuts through the ice.
Remnant wind and seeds suspended, locked
in the arctic vault of glacial ice.
Water under the keel is viscous, gelid, and dark,
slow, calmed in the presence of ice.
The cloud overhead is a bleached-out raggedy flag
woven of air, pollen, dust, and ice.
