Hello, Juneau. Smell that? Love is in the air! And love’s second favorite holiday, after the Reverend singer Al Green’s birthday on April 13, is coming up soon. Singles awareness day, St. Valentine’s, Whitman Chocolate Penny Stock Boom Day, whatever you want to call it. And it’s here in a week and change. Although, really you should just call it a week and keep the change because you may need it for balloons, teddy bears or Ferrero Rochers.
My fiancée and I try our level best to save money on these sorts of holidays and get crafty with the handmade gifts, but in order to keep from utterly slighting ol’ Mr. Saint Valentino, we probably will still give the holiday the nod by hitting up the movie theater for something. La La Land, maybe. Or John Wick Chapter 2: Double the Barrels Double the Damage. Let’s flip a coin! Heads, I win; tails, you lose?
Kidding. Underworld: Blood Wars it is.
Anyway. All seriousness aside, my only stated goal in this column is to focus on the changes in our town, and also the things that don’t change. Yeah, I know, that’s about a broad spectrum as writing about everything that is blue but also everything that isn’t, or writing about movie characters Gary Oldman could play if he wanted, but I take it as a call to pay some special attention to those things one might miss in this town if you weren’t looking.
(Speaking of which, am I the only one who wonders what that darn blue thing is out in the middle of the wetlands between Sunny Point and the airport? OK, maybe I am.) However, in the spirit of the upcoming holiday of love and my column’s vision, I’d like to offer a love poem I’ve written to Juneau, the land of the Tlingit and the town I know. Happy Valentine’s, Juneau!
Dear Juneau,
I love the way you move
the way you settle into tidal zones
the way you bend in the wind
the way you arch your mossy back
in the wake of a glacier’s icy pressure
the way you slip away
into valleys
and rivers
leaving stripes of raw mud and water
running down your side
I love the way you make us move asphalt and trade routes around you
tracing your foothills and mountain edges
the way you lift off into zephyrs
and dust the evening with your sultry pollen
the way you make little burrows and tree bank bedsides
the way you force your way nose first into the climbing cold streams
just to die in the clear shallow and raise the smell of your white flesh
to the drooping hemlock tops. Dear Juneau,
I love the way you fall and shatter
like crumbles of red dirt to grow life in your deadness
The way you pull up frost and snow around you
to muffle your angles and curves
I love the way you glide over ocean and air currents
the way you bleed on the moss,
leaving the blood and film of birth to soak in the rain.
The way you freeze into terrifying shapes
the way you tumble and thunder at night down deadly mountainsides
the way you flap your wings
from the bulbous tops of trees, sloughing little feathers onto the beach.
the way you swell with fireweed and lupine in the field
and buzz from flowers, each to each.
The way you seep into puddles spilling into puddles spilling into rivulets
that spill into the bay that spill into me
The way you soak my clothes when I walk through the blueberry patch
The way you break through the southern side of trees in the morning
to clarify the stream in little bars and patches
The way you call out with whines and grunts
and smell of musk in the brown meadow
the way you unfold your spiny leaves
and drive yourself into my skin, saying
keep me.
The way you drop from the stem
and swallow yourself into worms and beetles
and scatter my garden into your fringes
I love the way you whistle through mine shafts,
and drip from the stone forms of old buildings.
I love the way you eat us up, Juneau.
I love the way you watch me from trees with black conceited eyes
I love the way you draw yourself up into the mountains
like a secret.
I love the way you drip from the teeth and the stem:
the way you blend your drinks
the way you listen and the way you invite listening.
Juneau, I don’t know what to call you.
Juneau some days I wish you’d just name me.
Juneau, when I had my first kiss,
you folded us both into your mossy lips.
I love the way you float on the air, heavy like a corpse.
I love the way you wash little shells from around my feet,
the way you cling to the rocks
and throw yourself on buoys
the way you skate the sandy floor of
the cold grey water
the way you crawl onto rocks
to die in the heat of low tide
the way you welcome me
with low hanging branches
and high-bush berries
and waterfalls
and the danger
of falling
or freezing
of looking too long too close
or looking not close enough.
“Guy About Town” appears the first and third Sunday of every month and includes seasonal musings on what changes and what doesn’t in a small town. Guy can be reached at unzicker.music@gmail.com.
