Qikiqtagruk: Almost An Island by Andrea Spofford

Poetry
Photographs by author
40 pages
8.5" x 5.5" single signature with hand sewn binding
Published June 2014

Desperation III: Bears

In 1954 pilots dropped barrels,
canisters of oil and gas along this shore, a last
vestige of the desperate, a refueling station in the Arctic north.
The oil seeped into soil and the cans emptied,
rusted, labeled, plotted
by GPS coordinates, slated for removal,
manuport remnants of early Arctic flight.
Bears wallow here by the shore and once a blond grizzly
broke a can, bear’s paws all smeared and black,
slick oiled and grimed. The bear waded,
his tracks from shore to water a seep
of manufacture, a mar disappearing into mud.