Alaska Girlhood

Eden was a winter 
when gods skated the earth. 
They’d warm themselves by the fires 
that lit the man-high snowbanks 
bounding primeval lakes. 
Their shadows fingered the forest 
under the black eternal sky. 

I was a child and remember 
the time before feeling died, 
deep nights when 
the auroras strode in columns 
across heavens so clear 
they crackled with danger. 

And we were gods-in-making, 
following the paths they’d forged 
through the snow, sometimes to the edge
of the known ice, sometimes beyond. 
Or, holding our toes to the flames, 
breathing the dry pine heat, 
we heard their laughter and their somber talk,
drinking it in with wassail and hot milk. 

In our infancy we knew all things: 
the sublime with the unspeakable, both 
writing themselves in our formative minds.
We saw, accepted in our innocence 
which was not innocent but 
a great quilt of snow.