Thanks be for our steps on the Saami trail.
For the brief but sharp engraving of our senses,
like the ancient patterns cut into antler.
For feeling the rhythms of another way to mark the seasons,
glimpsed like Akka's white crown through a seam in the clouds.
Thanks be for sudden joy, when coming on mounds of ripe cloudberries,
we receive that first golden crush of new taste.
And for the white and green tangle of the birch forest.
Now the moment is gone, like the touch of a velvet antler;
Our trail turns sharply home.
But we know where reindeer calves will dance next spring.
Thanks be.
Jennifer L. Howse 8/2005