Juneau Spring

In Alaska I slept in a bed on stilts, one armpressed against the ice-feathered window,the heat on high, sweat darkening the collarof my cotton thermals. I worked hard to buy that bed,walked toward it when the men in the boothswere finished crushing hundred dollar billsinto my hand, pitchers of beer balanced on my shoulderset down like pots of gold. My shift ended at 5 a.m.:station tables wiped clean, salt and peppersreplenished, ketchups married. I walked the dirt roadin my stained apron and snow boots, wool scarf,second-hand gloves, steam risingoff the backs of horses wading chest deep in fog.I walked home slow under Orion, his starry belthung heavy beneath the cold carved moon.My room was still, quiet, squares of starlightset down like blank pages on the yellow quilt.I left the heat on because I could afford it, the househot as a sauna, and shed my sweater, my skirt,toed off my boots, slung my damp socksover the oil heater's coils. I don't know nowwhy I ever left. I slept like the deadwhile outside my window the sun roselow over the glacier, and the glacier did its bestto hold on, though one morning I woke to hear itgiving up, sloughing off a chunk of antediluvian icethat sounded like the door to heaven openingon a badly hung hinge. Those undefined daysI stared into the blue scar where the icehad been, so clear and crystalline it hurt. I sleptin my small room and all night—or what passed for nightthat far north—the geography of the worldoutside my window was breaking, changing shape.And I woke to it and looked at it and didn't speak.

—reprinted from the March/April 2007 issue of Orion magazine (www.orionmagazine.org)