A Great Deal of Light Falls on Everything

Gary Lehmann

North of Shishmaref the Eskimo knows what it is to be ice dazzled. The long hours poised over the hot sea run together at sunset, a red planet topped by a single gold corona sinking and sinking, within, the hunter must sit without stirring or risk scaring the shy seal away On Frobisher Bay they know it, what it is to be frozen into your own ice pack on some black morning when flat water has polished the face of the liquid earth to a burnished lustre sinking and sinking, within, the hunter must sit without stirring or risk scaring the shy seal away In the Greenland fjords, Peter Freuchen feels it piercing his wooden snow goggles, driving the blinding sickness of too much sight into a brain already feverish from too much light sinking and sinking, within, the hunter must sit without stirring or risk scaring the shy seal away