90
CIRQUE
4. So they will let me sleep, Elias, the veteran eulogizer celebrates my ghosts: Nicolai once dropped a swan with an impossible shot to break the spring famine of his family, Junior always made us laugh by mimicking ptarmigan during Eskimo dances at the National Guard Armory, Bummy fed his mother all winter with snared rabbits, dried salmon and his fall moose, Tuntu hauled drinking water ice for his mom, chopped firewood for his Uppa between stints in jail. All the river’s ghosts lived and loved and were loved even by those they hurt, Any of them could have been your friend, uncovered tiny tundra beauties. Every one of them could have taught you the trick of mourning by remembrance.
Volunteer Park Water Tower / Shadows, circa 1980 Kodachrome
Mike Burwell
Fukushima—Elegy for the North Pacific Sometimes a wave bends in on itself, crippled, limps 4,000 miles from a burning shrine in the west, topples to shore with more than wood or weed. Sometimes it brings death as a seal or a brace of guillemots, on Tuesday terns still as chalk, Wednesday, a score of murres upended.
William Waight