Numbers 1,2,3,4

by Elizabeth Graver

After Cairn, Spitsbergen

Number 1, wide-bellied, cracked and creviced, with slits and hollows, breasts and teeth.  Where did I come from?   Someone with finger-bones fashioned you to be a hunting blind, a compass point, True North.  Number 1 shifts her hips.  Given enough time (latitude, wind, quakes, neglect), she (we) will uncobble and unpuzzle, roll down to join shale and clatter.  Rest.  Behind her, Number 2 and Number 3 squat, great metal diaphragms, tipped uteruses.  Number 4 stands needle-thin and wired.  Where did we come from?  Someone with finger-bones built you to keep her company and do your jobs.  Number 1 marks; 2,3,4 measure.  Number 1 grounds; 2, 3, 4 gather.  Air.  The air we breathe.  How clear it looks up here, nothing doing, just the yeoman’s work of cupping, tracking the invisible, and below, in the permafrost, the seed vault with its million seed samples (in the unlikely event).  If we save, we can duplicate.  If we duplicate, we can proliferate. If we proliferate, we can sing, keep singing, never mind the rising measurements:  mercury, methane, CO2.  Stars shining, number one, number two, number three, good lord, bye n’ bye bye n’ bye, good lord, bye n’ bye.  Elsewhere, a man stares at a screen at data points, takes notes.  Here, for the ninety-nine days of the midnight sun and the eighty-four days of the polar night, Numbers 1, 2,3, 4, in voices beyond measure, sing.