Inuit Figure
bear’s head
glance cast back
across the shoulder
stance of a minotaur
heft to break down doors
to split pack ice on Arctic shores
the mask behind
bare vertebrae,
textures of grey-dappled stone,
suggest the shaman, known
to have powers of seeing
his own skeleton
a raven circles
dark among cypress
sun falls on copper lattice
burnishing patina
prayers are unlocked
from winter walls
after ‘Bear in shamanic transformation’ David Ruben Piqtoukan
ca. 1991. De Young Collection, San Francisco
Tony Lucas lives in London, south of the river. His most recent collection, Unsettled Accounts, was published by Stairwell Books. Now retired from the Anglican ministry, his poetry has appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently working on a sequence of poems about being in the ‘here and now’, which may appear toward the end of the year.
Amethyst Review 