My Father and the Lord of Null
I seek my father, the Holy Bear in his surplice and gown. I find him prostrate on frozen stones. Skua gulls pray in a high mewling voice. To whom do they pray? The White Fox God, the Lord of Null, his blinding force. The penalty for silence is loss. I lose my father to the wind. Silence has everything to say and holds its breath. I will find the fish of miracles if some one tells how I came to be born in red moonlight, the eider duck's breast pressed to her eggs under the sign of the crab.
Colette Inez has authored eight collections, the most recent of which is Clemency from Carnegie Mellon University Press. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and twice from the NEA. She has taught at Cornell, Ohio, and Bucknell Universities and is currently on the faculty of Columbia University's Writing Program. She has also appeared on public radio and television.