*

Arctic explorer-writer-mycologist Lawrence Millman is the author of 18 books, including such titles as Last Places, A Kayak Full of Ghosts, Fungipedia, Fascinating Fungi of New England, At the End of the World, Goodbye, Ice, and the forthcoming The Last Speaker of Bear. He has made 15 trips to Greenland, but has never been to Rome (Rome, New York – once). Note: A Greenlandic Meal is from Goodbye, Ice.

A GREENLANDIC MEAL

Lawrence Millman

A platter of seal liver and walrus fat
with a wide dish of berries
Nerillusuarisi! says my Inuit host
which means bon appetit
in his richly guttural tongue
I mispronounce the word
half a dozen times
so I ask him to write it down
but he shakes his head
Words are living things, he says,
and we imprison them
by putting them on paper
just like we imprison a bird
by putting it in a cage

Poor words! I say to myself
even as I lock a bunch of them
in this cage

— Lawrence Millman

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