Inukshuk
A stone unman stands
alone on the tundra, blind,
planed face giving nothing
away. Vole-gnawed antlers
bleach in the dim sun. Sharp
discs of snow tumble
westward under the clear sky.
A few flakes melt in the fount
of a speckled ptarmigan
shell. The hieroglyphic lichen
spell out their slow story, black
and orange, in a dead language.
The dull muttering of guns
rumbles downwind, and someone,
awaiting migration, finds
this stack of stones on the horizon
and is no longer alone.
Pending
How long has the sky been this blue?
Two swans passed over heading north
an hour ago. Now the cry of a peacock
from the house on the other side of the field.
Highway noise, of course, but was that
a frog already? Never in April!
One-third of a waxing moon perches
on the topmost branch of the big birch.
Before it is new we will be gone
from this house that our daughter
grew up in. Time to let go, to divest,
discard, slough off our thick skins
of stuff, before we take on the new shell.
Can we be as happy somewhere else?
Will the strange new home of the future
give us as much life as this house has?
How can it? Something else will happen
in such rooms, in that sky, in those branches.
The first slow mosquitoes gather themselves,
and that same old squirrel has something to say.
Waiting for the Revolution
Spring haze obscures the mountains, middle
distance making your acquaintance
in the interim (until the heavy air of fall
brings the far peaks up close again).
You wouldn’t think, to look at all that snow,
that it was spring. Shows what you know.
Easter makes a funny fertility festival here,
when the birch and aspen have only begun
thinking about their greenish duties,
and those garish long-leaved ads for spring—
tulip, crocus, iris, daffodil—
are just a gleam in the antsy gardener’s eye.
Only the pussy willows dare to push
this envelope, and only where they have survived
the browse of that annoying moose and her calf
whose snacking smacked the dogwood branches
against our bedroom window in the wee hours.
Chasing them off does no good. They just come back,
Like winter, soon enough.
Evening Spread Out Against the Sky
Nine ravens at play in the column of steam
From the power plant, mostly in pairs
With the odd bird swapping off, strafing
Each other, gliding in steeply ascending
Circles, dropping again in mock battle.
Spring is the mischief in them, and the devil
In me. In here the air is not so light,
freighted with moans of conversation
And flu germs, a phone squealing somewhere
And the insect clatter of keystrokes click-
Clicking their crisp, incessant messages.
At least I have this window, those ravens,
The sunset still interrupting the workday
To sharpen the edge of what passes, in
Here, for life and the business of living.
Eric Heyne has taught in the English Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks since 1986. He has published poems in Ice Floe, Alaska Quarterly, Platte Valley Review, and elsewhere, as well as essays on narrative theory and American literature, and edited two special literary issues of The Northern Review.
Over the last decade there has been a near-plethora of books written about northern caribou. 
