Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Nightrise.



It’s one a.m. August 7th 2017 in Healy, Alaska. Summer is fading and time is fading into the crucible winter to come. Just like it always has. In this day in age, hoping it will continue to just the same. I sat on the front porch of my little cabin in our little cabin community in the woods and thinking how much I would enjoy a nice menthol cigarette right now.

Shanty town is a place quite enough to realize how far from the world you are and populated enough to remind you that you’re not alone. Like the rest of Alaska vices and trees are easy to find here, boundless. Alaska is like the hubble surrounded by nothing but a vastness, hard to comprehend or imagine without being seen, of trees. The pines and birch reach on for days and days. In the winter for months and months. Nothing but a highway and a few roadside cafe’s and gas stations scattered along its path. Most of the businesses aren’t even open year round, only when the sun shines all day and all night. Soon half the town will be boarded up, three-fourths of the population will be gone, and the sunniest thing you’ll find is maybe the orange juice in the store.

I’m also thinking about how much I would enjoy not wanting a cigarette.

I looked up at the sky tonight and as I did for the first time since early spring I saw the big dipper. As clear as day. The seven stars laid bare across the backdrop sky, twilight hadn’t quite faded to blackness, and it won’t for another week or two at most. The sun had set in the south and as you looked behind and spun around to face the last rays of the setting sun you can see the night fighting for its way back into the sky. Almost as if the stars of the big dipper worked together to scoop the veil across the sky. At the tip of the spoon the veil couldn’t quite reach and essence of sunlight still beamed a brighter purple, to pink, to orange, to red at the brim of the northern sky. Summer isn’t done sewing winters veil.

I smoked the cigarette. Couldn’t finish even half.

I sat there for awhile. Eventually my attention was pulled towards little mr. vol as he scurried from his hideaway across the law and into his presumable food stash. I looked up where I felt I had just been. It happens so fast. Hazy  clouds covered the just beaming big dipper, while the sun drifted even further fading effortlessly into nights cool hands. The breeze blew cool air all around while the sound of a howling dog echoed in the background noise of bustling highway traffic and tired over gravelly roads. Luminescent small town echoes. The breeze dips quickly and begins to nip at the back of the uncovered arms. It drew me inside where I laid down and wrote this. Unable to write in weeks that felt like months I found myself with an empty old journal. Eventually it was three or four in the morning and this is what was left. Once it all was out for the most part, I drifted to sleep and dreamt it all again.





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