Legend
Sitka, AK
Porky wrote a pamphlet for the
cruise ships
about an island populated with
pink flamingos.
He explained how each year a
special flock comes north
because a rare hydrothermal vent
ten meters west of the island
spews hot water and
chemosynthetic archaea,
creating the ideal climate for
the brine shrimp flamingos eat.
Not much bigger than the Murray
Pacific parking lot,
the island’s rocky shore and
Sitka Spruce are the only place
in Alaska that a flamingo will
land.
This rare flock has recently
diminished to five or six,
one or two hanging upside down,
but they used to number fifty
or sixty and be pink as Porky’s
gums when he smiled,
hanging plastic flamingo bodies
from trees.
Once, flying in a friend’s old
Beaver, Porky dropped
a batch of tires on top of Mount
Edgecumbe,
came back on foot to light a
bonfire and stamp April Fools
on the volcano’s snowy cone. The
Coast Guard didn’t know
it was a false alarm until they
flew over the dome in a chopper.
These days I suppose Porky would
go to jail for a prank like that.
Otters eat thirty percent of
their body weight each day
because they have no blubber for
insulation. People say
Porky ate his whole weight in
pranks each day
to warm his tobacco-stained
whiskers and curled toes.
He had no old lady for insulation
and the winters here
bite like a wet dog. And the
dark, it isn’t even lit by stars.
I keep dreaming of Porky, wishing
death wasn’t so chronic
a condition, wishing he’d come
back and make me,
teeth shining in the night, smile
big as a gibbous moon.
Last Season
When my hands curl and cramp,
stiff and wracked as cracked
kelp,
I’ve been sweeping this seine
into careful heaps for too long
and when I sleep palms pressed
flat,
protecting fragile tendons, flex
of the wrist,
I dream my fingers bloom with
lichens,
stems and caps pooled with
freshwater.
What is it to stay? To know dirt?
I want to watch roots cast
shadows
in the dark, to watch how light
spreads
like an emerald wake under a
maple in sun.
Wonderful passage: "I want to watch roots cast shadows
ReplyDeletein the dark, to watch how light spreads
like an emerald wake under a maple in sun."