Writers’ Weir: The Stars of Memory

Writers’ Weir: The Stars of Memory

A poem by Alexis Ross Miller.

There is no room

in my heart for moonlight

over Mount Juneau

or Mount Jumbo

no room for the counting

of stars or constellations,

of the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters

this open cluster a composer

of middle-aged stars

large incandescent celestial bodies

with luminous points

no room for the Big Dipper

its ladle of glistening gems

shackled ‘round my ankles.

Grounding me to this town,

to this street void of lampposts

to this shuttered aorta of a house.

A gray shroud repeats

in cloud-form, fog-like gowns

flapping in the gale

of the Taku Winds whipping

down South Franklin Street.

Tomorrow is the uninvited guest

of my best friend’s death knocking

in remembrance at my shuttered windows.

Grief beckons its left hand to me

a flashing light on a buoy at sea

I am choking on the echoing sounds

of sorrow. My breath in my ears

pounds the shore where that buoy

bobs under again and again

sparring in rhythm with the ebb

and flow of the tides

punched aloft by the light

rising ascendant like shooting stars in this purple-black night sky.

— Alexis Ross Miller

• Alexis Ross Miller is born and bred Alaska. She was born in Fairbanks and moved to Juneau at 3. She has lived and worked in Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg, Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks and Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow).

The Capital City Weekly accepts submissions of poetry, fiction and nonfiction for Writers’ Weir. To submit a piece for consideration, email us at editor@juneauempire.com.

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