Chulitna I

A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 1

C h u l i t n a2

C h u l i t n a4

AcknowledgementsMike Burwell:

“Eddy at Sharp Cape” and “Wolf at Beaver Creek, Wrangell Mountains, Alaska”

appeared in Cartography of Water, NorthShore Press @ 2007.

“Fall Road to Eagle, Alaska” was first published in Ice-Floe: International Poetry of the Far North.

“Golfing in the Bering Sea” previously appeared online in the Alaska Dispatch at

http://alaskadispatch.com/

Randol Bruns:

“Anthony Paul Completes His GED” won first prize in the College Division, in

the annual University of Alaska/Anchorage Daily News Creative Writing Contest.

“Out of Season” and “Late Summer on the Lower Yukon” received honorable men-

tion in the same contest.

“The Moose and the Stars” was first published in Ice-Floe: International Poetry of the Far North.

“Evaporated Jesus” appeared in the Winter Solstice 2010 issue of Cirque.


Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s

La t e S u m m e r o n t h e Lowe r Yu ko nRandol Bruns

W i t h M y S t e p d a u g h t e r a t t h e L i t t l e N e l c h i n a R i ve rMike Burwell

A f t e r T h e Ru nRandol Bruns

Ed d y a t S h a r p C a p eMike Burwell

Em m o n a k W i n t e rRandol Bruns

A t t h e W i n d owMike Burwell

Eva p o r a t e d J e s u sRandol Bruns

F i rs t g h a z a l b e g i n s w h e n yo u p l a g i a r i ze Mike Burwell

O u t o f S e a s o nRandol Bruns

G o l f i n g i n t h e B e r i n g S e aMike Burwell

T h r e e C a n d l e sRandol Bruns

Fa l l Ro a d t o E a g l e , A l a s kaMike Burwell

T h e M o o s e a n d t h e S t a rsRandol Bruns

T h e D a r k Ro a dMike Burwell

C a t c h i n g M y K i n gRandol Bruns

B l e s s i n g s o f t h e Tr a i lMike Burwell

A n t h o n y C o m p l e t e s H i s G E DRandol Bruns

Wo l f a t B e a ve r C r e e k , Wr a n g e l lM o u n t a i n s , A l a s kaMike Burwell

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

C h u l i t n a6

Late Summer on the Lower YukonIt is quiet, except for that chattering

Squirrel, somewhere back among the poplars

willows and cottonwoods lining this shore.

Some strange bird, farther off down river

begins a song when that crack in a perfect

dome of porcelain clouds reveals blue.

How can so much water make so little noise?

Last night I heard the sound of shotguns,

still the fall geese, that fly at dusk.

Now, it’s morning, and the gray dawn turns orange.

Willows along the shore begin to move;

light green leaves, not yet yellow, fall on me.

RB


With My Stepdaughter at the Little Nelchina River Long summer road, high tundra.

We sleep above the rounded black stones

of the Little Nelchina lapping

the edges of our dreams.

There is joy here, even as we sleep:

a haze of long light, odor of smoke from far fires,

a semi clattering north to Tok,

a few shafts of western wheat grass

knock lightly on the tent wall

from cool glacier air pushed down canyon.

Tomorrow there will be tall volcanoes,

wide rivers slashing to the coast,

but tonight we are made by the tumbling

chat of the Little Nelchina—

what it never stops telling us:

its small waters, our small dreams

a single traveler in the eddying night.

-mbMB

C h u l i t n a8

After The RunMidnight, and it’s still raining.

This wet ash arctic lightlingers, through an August night.

There’s a dank smell of rottingFlesh, along the banks of this grayshore; sockeyes with empty eyesockets, gaping mouths, razor sharp teethbodies all lie, exposed on the sand.

More of the dead are stillunderwater, limp, heldagainst the rocks, balancedby the cold current’s whim. Leeches still cling to their sides.

All of this flesh,now in tatters,strips, dangleswaversin the current,pointing downstream.

What is this blind driveto struggle, spawn and diein such quick succession?

This cruel urge,an inscrutable designtowards a darker star,unseen, and alwaysthe return,to the same small eddyin the same rocky stream,that flows down, into the brown

surging Yukon, and then out

to the Bering Sea. RB


Eddy at Sharp Cape Two days below Dawson, the Yukon

and our canoe must turn

at the foot of Sharp Cape,

a rock spire the color of overcast sky,

sheer enough in its upward cut

to slice imaginations of a century’s travelers

as they swept past. High enough

to bleed mist from low clouds.

I see the way the fishwheel here

turns after the run has passed:

empty and useless.

How the river gives in

to no one’s loss or forgetting.

And how, in this moment,

like the fishwheel,

my hunger for the river rolls out

somewhere into the far hills

to fall down in wilderness.

MB

C h u l i t n a10

Emmonak Winter

When the bears dig down, and dream

slow rhythms beneath the roots

of spruce, and the hares wear white

padding about with pink eyes,

dodging the old Yup’ik woman’s

snares in the deep willow snow;

and the air cracks at words spoken,

then, we learn silence, hear the bright

trailing lights in the long nights.

I’ve seen days, when a blinding

cold sun couldn’t clear the tops

of shrub willows, but hung burning

orange, in a freezing mist

like an old trader’s tin lantern

held out over the Bering Sea.

RB


At the Window

In deep winter there’s nothing

you can grab with fists. A moon’s

weight on the snow

is still no moon. Voices trail,

traffic rubs the horizon raw:

its constant grit sanding down

silence. Dog sounds break

to muffles and my neighbor

won’t lift his eyes to mine.

Empty trails behind the house

fill with no feet. One more

degree down makes ravens

shuffle, waxwings topple,

birches shatter.

At the window,

I drink the wine I can’t afford.

MB

C h u l i t n a12

Evaporated Jesus

I went to town to buy a sink,

and ended up in Vietnam.

It’s funny how that happens.

The “Associate” in the Kitchen

Department, who is in charge

of selling sinks, tells this story

about being in the Navy

for 2 tours, after trying

to get out of the draft

by claiming he was

a Quaker.

A Quaker?

But the local draft board

made up of his neighbors

would have none of it,

because they all knew him

from childhood.

All I am trying to do

is buy a sink,

I think,

do I really need to listen

to your story ?

But I listen,

because I am polite

and also strangely interested

in what my Associate

has to say.

I want a sink, stainless steel

no faucet, just the sink

and I can’t help but think

of the 2 and a half million Vietnamese, dead

the 55 thousand US soldiers lives, all

Evaporated, Jesus

what were we thinking ?

Personally, I am thankful, the Army

overlooked me, in their mad

search for warm bodies

while I was “hanging”, at the University

sorta studying

sorta,

you know what I mean.

I mean, the Army left me alone

for which I am eternally grateful

that my name, is not on that black

marble wall in Washington, DC.

Now, I know how noble it is

to die for King and country:

flag, honor, courage etc.,

but, I wonder,

how many

of those whose lives were

extinguished in Vietnam,

now wandering in gray haze

of eternity,

would give anything

for a single day

to walk the empty isles

of this Home Depot

marveling, at the mystery

of so many colorful sinks? RB


First ghazal begins when you plagiarize

a magpie swoop from electric wire to house, that stops

cold strong light, puts you back together for a few seconds.

Bird dips reminding you of Roman galleys moving to the strokes of slaves:

a whole civilization of oppression for a precise oar stroke.

But one magpie does it with two given wings.

It’s not November when the light that strikes birches

is too brief and slides slowly to the ground.

It’s not March either when the ground’s still bright white

light bathes these same birches on the north the west the south the east.

It’s February--mouth of the frozen sign of water--that brings

hope if you have at least one friend who can still sing.

I died once by water in Prince William Sound. Wouldn’t know this

except my ex-wife’s story of her scream waking me.

I come alive like a reptile, only to charge off toward Cordova

shoeless through the spruce.

The second time was in Home Depot

on a pallet of particle board.

One minute you are getting lumber for the cabin,

the next, it’s just dark. I can tell you it’s not painful.

But you fret over lost time and general darkness when you return.

Remember. What’s free is still cold and love poems fall flat.

What’s near is far; what’s far is already in your wallet.

The poet needs the luxury to get back

to where he started, to get out with his life. MB

C h u l i t n a14

Out of Season

It is late August, on the lower

Yukon, cold and raining

again.

These raindrops sizzle and pop

on the top of my kerosene lantern.

I hold it up and out,

into this,

the darkest evening of the year.

A large black bear is sprawled on its back

in the bottom of the boat.

This bear’s eyes catch my light

and float back,

a startling florescent orange.

A piece of cardboard has been placed

under the bear’s head,

to catch the dripping blood.

A gray, swollen tongue lolls out,

the side of the bear’s jaws,

clamped tight

between yellow, worn teeth.

The Eskimos say, the bear

made a long, low, drunken howl

when shot.

They ask for my help,

so I set down my lantern,

grab a leg

to lift her out.

She has pieces of sand and gravel still sticking to her thick wet fur,picked up when rolling her body down to the boat.

Sticking the tip of the knife into her and pulling up, we slice the hide, watch it separate over a distended belly.

Passing the dull knife back and forth over her body, we each take our turn, skinning down along the ribs. Her heavy hide folds back, reveals a thick layer of white fat. With a dull ax, we chop at her neck bone, cutting off her head. Now, a headless white bodylies on the wet rocks.Her empty windpipe inhales the night. There are always dogs about, and tonight they are frenzied, licking bear blood off the rocks.


One of the dogs, has porcupine

quills sticking out the side

of its nose.

We slice open

the bear’s stomach

watch

the red cranberries

spill out.

Her heart is saved,

the paws will be boiled,

the ribs are given

to the one who shot.

Each gets a piece,

and I get

a leg.

Back inside Peteroff ’s cabin,

we share black coffee,

cigarettes, and listen

to the rain drumming

on an old tin roof.

When the Eskimos leave,

they have only

a small flashlight

on a moonless river

to find their way down

to Ikogmiut.

After they’ve gone,

I put the bear’s leg in a canvas bag,

tie it up high

in a white spruce, safe,

from the restless dogs.

Later that night,

the wolves began to howl

up behind Bald Mountain,

and I lay awake, dreaming

about a bear’s leg

hanging, in a tall spruce,

standing beside a clear spring

flowing down

to the Yukon

and out to the Bering Sea.

RB

C h u l i t n a16


Golfing in the Bering Sea

--for Gary Edwards

No swell and sun today as Gary steers

the Big Valley northeast through the channel

reading the chart and the Daily News

simultaneously, instructing us,

like all captains before, on the Kodiak stories

of the sea, the survival and sure loss

that make a fisherman’s life on this island.

Stories that send the new ones out looking,

make the older ones stay and go again.

Gary, our captain, a son of crab’s glory and fall.

His wits have him chartering the Big Valley

now to oceanographers, scientists

studying sea lions and crab and others

counting whales. And us looking for a wreck:

archaeologists, divers, rapt lovers

of what the sea and time have taken back.

Gary turns the Big Valley north at Spruce Cape

crossing Narrow Strait to the site on Spruce

Island: Icon Bay where we search for the Kad’yak

an old Russian ship sunk by God they say

because the captain would not let the priest

make a departing prayer. The swell rises,

we anchor, the divers are down.

We rock in the Bay’s swell, long breaking waves

wrack the shore beneath Father Herman’s chapel

lurking back in the spruce. Birds whine and whirl.

Gary talks of the Big Valley’s mutiny

years before he owned her, shows me the cabin

where an anxious crew locked up their captain

high on pills and dope after a crazy week

wielding his pistol on deck, forcing them

to fish without sleep or food, threatening

to shoot anyone going for his bunk.

They cornered him finally in his fugue,

locked him in and sailed for Homer

where the Coast Guard and the cops

locked him up again.

The divers ascend, arriving with great news:

the discovery of the Kad’yak’s rudder.

They rest and drink in joy as we steam home

to our float and dinner at Dog Bay.

Gary’s stories spin on, open out

to new territory: “We were working

crab a couple of years ago, in the Bering.

We were dingie from the work and no sleep.

Jeff, the mate, appeared on deck with two golf clubs.

He dragged me to the stern and handed me

a club--a driver. He’d gotten aboard

a bucket of balls somehow. We spent

an hour driving those little white balls out, over

the 20-foot swells of the Bering Sea.

And you know, it felt great, something complete,

this satisfying thing happened.” Gary is quiet,

peers deep into the mist of the channel,

goes below to break out the dinner wine

for the divers, talking their stories

of deep eastern wrecks and rich, rich history.

--The Big Valley sank January 15, 2005.

Gary Edwards was never found.

MB

C h u l i t n a18

Three CandlesThis golden boy, bouncing, baby curls, rushing from room to room with three candles rustling in a brown paper bag,saved from his birthday cakehe had earlier today. What do you have in there? I ask, as he runs up proudly proclaims:“I’m free years old”then rushes off to another room. Last night he woke up crying,sweating, heart racing in the darkand would not be quieteduntil I picked him up, held him,whispered the warm syllablesof his name. I sat there, enfolding him,listening to all the cold spacesacross dripping time,and thought I heard a voiceI recognized, holding methrough all the dark fall windsnow rasping outside our window.

RB


Fall Road to Eagle, Alaska

Three months of summer

have buried this day’s name in light,

but tonight we know the season will fail

as the sun strains with the horizon,

practicing again at going down.

We see the world’s loss,

its destruction, swept

to dark, on the orange and red

trailing of last light.

A high possibility flies

in these colors:

new light quickens to gold

above the turning hills of the Forty-Mile.

MB

C h u l i t n a20

The Moose and the Stars

There’s a moose, just hit by a car

lying on the side of the road.

Big clumps of fur, blood is

spreading, soaking new snow.

The moose lies here,

large brown eyes still open wide

as if amazed by the lights,

moving too fast

down this black highway.

He may have wanted to cross

over, to where the willows grow

or may have come down

to lick the salt off the asphalt.

I’ve seen them here before

on their knees,

like they are praying

by the side of the road.

It is sparkling clear and cold

tonight, the stars so bright

the broad arch of the Milky Way

seems to entwine them all.

Otherwise, everything

on this frozen highway

would be falling apart

on a night like tonight

when a young moose

is left lying

by the side of the road,

his two front legs

still, reaching out

for safer ground.

RB


The Dark Road

After dinner, driving back in rain,

the road a black, mist-filled tunnel,

the headlights catch a grayness.

Closer, it grows taller

to a shape we know: snowshoe hare

not white, but gray and slow.

He claims the road like a failed

emperor, without attendants and troops,

awaiting death’s dim glory

here on the dark road.

We stop to scare him to green

shoulders and safety and long

life, but he refuses our words.

Finally, I nudge him lightly with my foot.

And he barks like a large dog,

races off on a trail

ripped in the dark

by the weight of his cry.

MB

C h u l i t n a22

Catching My King

My father said, you’ve got to go

down the muddy banks, walk out

into the current, carefully

cast your line, deeper

into the water, darker

darker than I could see, running

past, and wait, for what happens

besides the usual: tangles,

arguments and broken lines.

That’s it, he said, you’ve got to see

what the early morning brings

when all manner of things

are still possible.

And it was, a dimebright male

fresh from the deepest oceans

sea lice still clinging.

With my King flopping furiously,

another fisherman ran to help

haul it back to shore,

where I clubbed it,

with a piece of driftwood,

stuck it, with my knife

till it lay still, bled quietly

and all the currents ran red.

RB


Blessings of the TrailEach new flower

makes me stop,

rest, bring back my breath,

mold it to adoration, to worship

over their painted

and sacred bodies.

Blue chiming bells

call up to me first,

then quickly,

dark blue lupine,

a chocolate lily.

The trail climbs

mercilessly to the alpine

but like providence

new flowers come faster:

more chance to slow my breath,

more time to adore.

Above treeline

they come desperately:

small, tenacious,

desirous

like my breath,

like my need for the peak.

My stations of rest come

at forget-me-nots, gentian,

spring beauty, rockcress,

pearl windflowers,

lemon anemones.

But these same blooms

that stop me, push me up:

floral cairns marking,

with color and grace,

my way to higher,

more rarified ground. MB

C h u l i t n a24

Anthony Completes His GED

“It happens all the time, the nativeskill themselves, but they don’t bother us.”

In this day, a solitary shot

from a high-velocity muzzle

makes small noise shattering, but one chest

one man, conscious but bleeding, waiting

for vigorous resuscitation.

Must have been a shock to his parents

downstairs watching TV, when they heard

the report, ran to call EMTs

to patch this hole that grows toward the heart.

And then the autopsy, courtesy

of the State, to have out what went wrong

with Anthony, barely nineteen years

had just completed his GED

told his future was in computers.

His grandfather used to hunt the white

Arctic fox on the Bethel tundra.

It could take days following the tracks

waiting for the right moment to strike

when the fox lay asleep in the snow.

Black knowing eyes buried in the white

on white, and then the silent arrow. RB


Wolf at Beaver Creek, Wrangell Mountains, Alaska

--for Allison Hedge-Coke

This gray shape before me

not any known thing.

From twenty feet, my eyes slide

into other eyes, full

of wild streaks of darkening sky.

The creek rushes in its small calling.

He moves first, turns from the trail,

trots off, turns, stares,

trots, stops, stares

three more times before the willows

swallow him. I am rooted under clouds

ripping in winds too high to hear,

that other eye heaving in the heart.

-mbMB

C h u l i t n a26

About the AuthorsRandol Bruns:

Randol Bruns came to Alaska to canoe down the Yukon River. He built a cabin on

the Talkeetna River and has taught in Yup’ik Eskimo communities on the Lower

Yukon. He is currently building a house on the Little Susitna River. His poems

have been published in Ice-Floe and Cirque.

Mike Burwell:

Mike Burwell writes environmental impact statements, teaches poetry part time

at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and maintains a database on Alaska ship-

wrecks. His poetry collection Cartography of Water was published by North Shore

Press in 2007. He is also editor of the new literary journal Cirque.

C h u l i t n a28

Chulitna I

Documents

Transcript of Chulitna I