Frontiers - Alaska inspired poems by M.E.Brinton
1.
Cattle lull restless tails flick crossing Alaska river swollen spring
What is this which lures me to think of it again
I cross my New England town street with an ice stick, inching across salt and sand,
snow. What drives me without horses day after day
waking at dawn to my sun salutation of Ra, the god of light. I am
part of this light, swollen fearful life daring to drive my cattle words.
From dark tidal bays, river floods I am jumping in to saddle the horse
My mind's image of a wild- away.
2.
Caught in the wild, stuck on this theme- wild. Caught in its throes
Alaska tidal pastures, cattle, wolves, bear cubs graze as mother, a
Mother bear looks on. Mother Russia across the straits lures the even
wilder roamers - gone to Earth above Heaven, that phrase where
Life begets life and living communes with tides.
Tides of souls looking on, graven, sullen, unused rifles left on ground
And it's time for them to be unused. The dead may moan
3.
What raises the spirit to another land, peaks beyond peaks, a
Sun white dance? Only the sweat of the living, hard- laboured living
growing food for body, song for the Dead. Fish spawn up
rivers in this wild, jumping into waterfalls: this is magic.
They rise as torrents descend. How do they do it, these
ancient mythic salmon, year after year, faithful to the birthing
season. They give themselves for fodder amongst soul-kin.
I sit with laptop, stove, piano
music before me, street lights glimmering and snow falling
knowing I could be wild like them ascending a fall transcending
Time into another and another; I too could catch fish over cattle,
Turn from Bear -- anytime.