Flowers of Nunavut

On broad, bare river rocks, a tourist bends to tug plush purple saxifrage from its shallow roots. Huge above its tiny leaves, the first flower of tundra holds a soft dry pea, an aftertaste of sweet extinction. Sometimes the leaf tips carry crystals as desert flowers do. Down by the shattered sea, a woman sells necklaces of three dark, gleaming fox claws threaded on a cord. Upstairs at the museum, in a black and white photograph, a girl holds an arctic fox around the waist, her tolerant pet. Inside a cabinet, two soapstone bears play the same accordion. Outside, the tourist stands to listen to the broken ice on Koojesse Inlet. She turns three-sixty: she still can’t believe there aren’t any trees. She steps over pipes to return to the hotel. At home, pipes are underground, cars roll smoothly over sanitary apparatus deeply plumbed. At home, she…