Einaudi’s Elegy for the Arctic
For the ones that walk,
the ones that fly,
and the ones that swim.
For the ragged face
of ice dripping, crumbling.
For the keys like teeth
he puts his fingers on.
For skin bared to the chill.
For lenses that help me
see what’s right
under my nose.
He pauses for a refrain
not scored or played—the ice
groaning and cracking, adagio
of crash and roar—the beginning
of the end. Once there was
so much ___________.
Now there is so little ___________.
Each note is delicate
like four hundred parts per million,
like three millimeters per year.
This is the music of the billions
upon billions of mouths
—the ones that speak
and the ones that do not.
Loon
Night takes the lake
while the sky keeps light
late, slow to give way
to the black and stars.
Here, no phones or sirens
break night’s quiet.
We sit with it
and then we hear—
sliding across the water,
slicing the dark—that rising
then fading trill,
older than shoes or words.
In time every nail
will give, every rivet fail,
every hard drive crash.
Even the roads we traveled
will return to gravel,
grass, trees, and brush.
That cry across the water—
was that you or the bird?
______________
Matthew Murrey’s poems have appeared widely, recently in Split Rock Review and JAMA. He’s an NEA Fellowship recipient, and his debut collection, Bulletproof, was published in 2019 by Jacar Press. He’s a public school librarian in Urbana, Illinois where he lives with his partner; they have two grown sons.
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