And what after all would you need to ask them,
those specters thawing out of the Northwest Passage
like carbon from permafrost, the outflow of Larsen C
silting their famished spoor of boots and buttons,
sun dogs at the heel of their ever-shifting north?
How deep the cost can sink in cold equations,
tolling kelp-clappered watches of brash ice?
The common denominator, beyond white drill and red ink,
of empire irreducible as flensed bone?
The incommensurate kindness of seal liver,
the frost-fumbling grip when the pack underfoot
is already calving to myth and memory—
or would you hear out from these soft lead oracles
the secrets we stopper within our own mouths,
that liquid lesson they met hard as a mirror
between aurora and extremity,
seeping from each step of our high ground?