Anghik Ruben, Abraham. Passage of Spirits. 20th-21st c. De Young Museum, San Francisco
A boat carved of stone and ten figures aboard
At the bow a stone bird holds up a drum
holds it out above his head like a pilgrim
might have once held out an amulet
of protection
against that good night
The nine stone figures behind
pull their ox horn oars to his beat
Some are
men some are
animals some are
spirits
From the center of the boat rise long
slender spiraling shapes:
antler prongs, caribou,
connected at the ends with wrapped cord,
extending high over the oarsmen
in a motion of wild stillness
swooping down like the
glowing green flourish
of the Aurora
In a glass box in a museum
I found a little stone boat which was called
Passage of Spirits
An Inuit sculptor named Abraham Anghik Ruben
saw a world growing hopelessly past
the old ways
And so, from soapstone, he carved a boat
that the old beliefs, soon to be forgotten,
might take their own leave of this world
guided by the Aurora
carried afloat by Sedna
in a direction their descendents cannot follow.
I am a Russian Jewish German Irish Something
daughter of daughters
of immigrant settlers
The oarsmen of soapstone
that my grandfather’s grandfather knew
when he left his homeland
never made it to me
That loss forgotten
is like a limb I was never born with
My empty socket
does not bleed, nor does it ache
I am simply off-balance–
a beached ship tipped to the side
with nothing to hold it up
What a violent wound, it must be:
To have been born with such a gift
and to have been sundered
from it, to live with
an aching phantom limb
and a gash that cannot close
THE RABID RABBIT 