chulitna i
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Chulitna ITRANSCRIPT
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 3
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.
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 5
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
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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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 7
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 9
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 11
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 13
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.
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 15
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 17
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 19
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 21
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 23
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
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 25
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.
A C o n ve rs a t i o n i n Po e m s 27
C h u l i t n a28