Alaska

“We have lots of furniture in our house that doesn’t belong to us.”
-Sen. Ted Stevens, on trial for corruption

There are whales lost in every lake
and seaplanes lost in every cloud.
There are dogs all over town
that lean against me like needy lovers,
like the homeless babying into a church wall.
A drunk I’ve known 40 years
tells me he knows how to unmelt the glaciers.
I get letters about caribou. I dream
about women walking through walls.
Gracefully, I eat venison
with forks that belong to my children
and knives that belong to my parents.
The hysterics are coming after me for corruption I say
corruption is the earth spinning so lazy
that the sun barely rises winterlong.
Corruption is worshipping the damn empty wilderness,
keeping it frozen forever, like Disney’s head.
My shoes belong to a limited holding company.
They’ve been socialized like a Soviet wheatfield.
I expect one day the Russians will try to reclaim
their churches here, their dour drop-faced saints,
their Cyrillic log-stack of language.
But until then this land is mine, even if grizzlies
meander down Main every night,
even if deer in their lithe bodies come down
from the mountains and into my yard
to startle at each lint of sound,
even if the wolves, shot from the sky,
drag their ruined hind legs
through the white fields.