I brushed away wood chips, brought your face<\/p>\n
From the soft yellow cedar wood. Solitary atop the totem,<\/p>\n
I searched the cross channel, squinting into the fog<\/p>\n
Trying to see you sailing deep into the passing years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I climbed through the mist, up the high glacier trail<\/p>\n
Then chiseled your figure into the clear blue ice,<\/p>\n
You, who had pushed on in night below the aurora<\/p>\n
Toward some distant and lonely roadhouse light.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With riverbank mud, I scrubbed you onto my canvas<\/p>\n
Pallet knifed thick with tragic leaf matter and rock,<\/p>\n
Current cutting a deep and broad ravine into heart tundra,<\/p>\n
Eating away my banks, exposing my tangled alder roots.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then ebbing and flowing in kelp and soapy surf foam<\/p>\n
You strewing the beach as seaweed and bird feathers<\/p>\n
Your face among the clouds in tidal pool reflections<\/p>\n
Before I called out for you with the cry of the gulls.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You have become the bear\u2019s paw print in muskeg<\/p>\n
And I, the jagged black spruce, torn by Arctic winds,<\/p>\n
You, cobalt footprints in winter twilight\u2019s violet snow,<\/p>\n
I, wind crusted, frozen down hard into a sunless fjord.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Once on a sunlit eve, I stitched a blueberry lining<\/p>\n
From a solstice sky rinsed clean with June rain<\/p>\n
For a birch bark basket of longing, pulled square, stitched<\/p>\n
Tight with strips cut from the hope of an Equinox melt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Atop the summer sailboat mast above the vibrant harbor,<\/p>\n
I stretch my black wings for the afternoon sun. Closing my eyes I hear<\/p>\n
New green bear grass growing thick along the creek drainage.<\/p>\n
And above, your lost love, floating as a slow summer cloud.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2022 P.M. David has been a writer and a resident of Alaska since 1979 and Auke Bay since 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I brushed away wood chips, brought your face From the soft yellow cedar wood. Solitary atop the totem, I searched the cross channel, squinting into the fog Trying to see you sailing deep into the passing years. I climbed through the mist, up the high glacier trail Then chiseled your figure into the clear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21965"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}