Matches

At Ilulissat, the kids
were smoking on the deck
in parkas, with pink milkshakes.

Snow bright and filiform,
light bristling
little compass needles

pointing out towards
the sea, the fact
of the ice-made-world.

I needed a light. I couldn’t ask.
I sat on an outcrop of gneiss
and faced the forms

of those thousand-year travellers
from deep in the icecap
to the foot of Semej Kujalleq

as if they could be fathomed
in our match-struck lives,
that human game we play

holding the little fires
in front of us, speaking
until our fingers start to burn.