Scent of black cherry kindling lingers in the patchwork
building, cast-iron stove still ticking over, warm to the
gloved touch. We have skidded to a halt, breathless, nervy,
guided here by a finger gliding across a small screen.
The dock has been jimmied from its pilings, quagmired on shore,
woodgrain magnified beneath a slick of ice. Positioned to catch
roof run-off, a wooden barrel slips its hoops. We posit
a sculpture of dock, metal and nearby rock, execution
iffy (acetylene torch, glue gun), but plausible.
Drawn to the edges of hemlock light,
we cantilever ourselves upward for the singular view
of the creature—upright, teetering
on a snowbank. Its arms are old propellers with crusty,
frostbitten tips. Metal birdcage for a head.
Below it are silvered fish houses, nominally
unremarkable, voltaic in this swarming light. One of us has traced
on the windcombed snow the blurred outline
of our former home. There is no explanation
for the fanatic promiscuity of white, or the bird skulls dangling
at the creature’s side. Now we are prone, on the edge
of the coast, the horizon punctuated by a black twig.
The green metallic hysteria we thought of as extreme sky
is an ice cliff, looming, fresh from the ruins of Antarctica.
Cracking, shearing. Eviscerating daylight.