Thursday, April 9, 2015

ALASKA

If anyone should be celebrating International Poetry Month it's me. My writing career was launched because of a poem. Were it not for that poem, I probably wouldn't have become a writer. But that's a long story, so I'll save it for another time. I haven't written much poetry since that poem that changed my life. Here's one of the few...it's about Alaska...a place that would inspire anyone to wax poetic.



Alaska…raw, rare, primeval, other-worldly…a vast white wonderland of jagged mountains carved from the heated rage of Earth during a time we can no longer remember.

Alaska…where through a misted sky the eagle soars in search of some morsel from the bounty offered up by a sea made chill by ice cast off from gemstone-blue glaciers that have had their fill of earth and rock and sand.

Alaska… where time hangs suspended in endless day that becomes endless night until it becomes endless day once more to cast its spell upon your body and mind.


Was that a mountain peak, snow-capped, cast adrift on a sea of clouds and ice, or was it the ghost of something that bewitched the eyes to become a memory so vivid that memory and reality become one in a limitless, breathtaking landscape?

Alaska…bodies bundled from the wind and drizzle, a red parka stark against the flint-grey cold of a pebbled beach where the sea makes certain that fishers, casting their lines shoulder to shoulder, do not wait long for their catch.



Alaska…you are too awesome to paint, even in words. Your landscape escapes capture, making mockery of the camera’s lens just as the Orca diving to arctic depths scorns the curiosity seeker, offering him, at very best, a mere glimpse of its grandeur.




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