The Face Everyone Got

Two inches of driftwood from a house on Baffin Island, the same blank face every carver of that century gave everyone, the same short arms, as if hands were not the point of a person yet.

Then the robe, long, split down the front, a few light cuts for folds, and on the chest two lines that cross.

Don't say the stranger got no face. He got the face the carver's own grandmother got, the one they all had, the plain oval that means only: someone. The difference went where differences go, into what can be taken off.

From the other boat, the Norse wrote down a word for the people they met, and no faces at all. So both first pictures came out the same way: a name, a garment, a sign, and under them, kept blank on purpose or out of habit, which here is the same kindness, a person like any person, not finished yet, waiting for the second meeting that never quite came.