sleepless in Somba K’e

for the Coney River, otherwise known as the Yellowknife River

precariously perched on once-infinite ice & sweltering in broken records

so many degrees of industry intrusion on the front lines of global warming dying

along your banks thousands of people speak, sing, shout in eleven languages & more: Chipewyan, Dogrib, Gwich-in, North Slavey, South Slavey, Cree, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, Inuinnaqtun, English, French…

illuminated by the midnight sun, you flow regardless of the Giant Gold Mine’s steady leak of 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, the bustle of unionized Ekati diamond mine workers, the repeated dramas of visitors, hunters, bureaucrats, researchers, tourists, more miners, students

Snap Lake is “Canada’s first completely underground diamond mine.” after the unsettlers are finished, what legacy will it leave?

the home of Coney and of Coney-eating Dene for thousands of years, will this short blip of urban disturbance pass as quickly as it began, or will it readjust itself to your icy rhythms?

medicines abound as the blind walk & dig: some can hear them, many can’t. what will we learn from crowberry, blueberry, elderberry, yarrow, caribou, whitefish, Yamozha?