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The night you decided not to come back

from sleep, I knew. I didn't close my eyes.

Instead, I remembered all you had taught me.

To turn the polar bear's head to the sun,

so he can find his way home.

How to keep my chin and cheeks

from getting blackened by cold.

How to find the base of my grief,

manage it with company of friends,

my dogs and narwhal meat.

You had a smile for death. I heard

no gasp of sadness, no struggle,

no unwillingness to let go.

You went as quietly as a seal

from its breathing hole.

You taught me that to make a tattoo

I would need a bone needle, thread

blackened in the soot of a stone oil lamp.

You taught me that during pregnancy,

a woman should not eat caribou tongue,

marrow or innards, nor the front paws of an animal.

When I was a child, you recollected how

my mother sliced through my umbilical cord

with a slither of ice, then licked me clean.

How I cried out, demanding a name.

You swallowed worlds, regurgitated them

as stories, when the sea froze, the days

started to get dark and another kind of cold.

It has been almost a year since I took

the white man's liquorice

out from your pockets

and shared it with the children.

Almost a year since we dressed you

in your most beautiful winter garments,

carefully placed stones across your body.

I have come to you, nearly every day,

to talk, softly, about the people, our village.

My wife's belly is tight with child.

I put my head close, and can hear

the powerful echo as he turns.

He will have your name.