Ice

Yunakaltja,     salt lake -
camp of the ice-men, underneath.
You can’t see them, but that means nothing.
When they open the door to their cave
they can touch you.
(Who says they have no life?)
Everybody feels the ice-men.
They come from the south, travelling everywhere.
They make the cold.
They make the winter wind.
They can freeze anyone.
Their bodies are covered with ice.
Eyebrows, beards, long hair
thick with frost.
They freeze the rockholes.
They crack the hunters’ feet,
lift mountains, and
turn the hills upside down.
They make small, big; and big, small.
Only strong chanting hunts them away -
you can’t fight ice with boomerang and spear.
But the songs can stop their roar;
the songs can chase them back to Yunakaltja,
to their home under the salt lake
where they live in ice
with no women.

(from Singing the Snake)

© Billy Marshall Stoneking