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False Asphodel
Tofieldia pusilla
Matanuska-Susitna
Arctic sky, at home in my skin. Not sure
what to superimpose but the cluster of flowers.
Community suffers five fires in three days.
Such are the particulars of place and condition.
I could walk in the fireweed forever
now listening for you, for something
bright uncurling in the barren lands.
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Large-Flowered Wintergreen
Pyrola grandiflora
East Anchorage
The sparkling and silk-seed. The wild mint and horsetail.
The firepit, perhaps, and the saplings, and the turquoise lake.
This was the one house they carried me home to.
These were the sentences spoken. And why not?
Every poem a room, complete. Marbled wallpaper.
Sliding glass door. And these were the swaddling
clothes. And the place where the old fir fell.
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Common Mare’s Tail
Hippuris vulgaris
Wishbone Hill
More like a cat than anybody’s child.
Graceful, crazed. Because the flowers
of this plant, because with seal oil and blood
they make a soup, because the ovary has a slender
style. I wouldn’t have seen you walking.
Because the young man looked out between
the bars and there was firelight, there was day.
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Snow Buttercup
Ranunculus nivalis
King Mountain Lodge
The solitary tuft or clump. The many words for snow.
In which one sinks. Powder that looks like salt crystals.
You were waiting in the flake I studied. In the season
of hibernation, or of emptiness, or of the stones
blowing up the shore. Then you took shape against
the dark. Slushy, that is used for icing a sled’s runners.
Or full of holes. Or crystalline, just as the sea begins to freeze.
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Creeping Goosegrass
Puccinellia phryganodes
Fish Lake
Goose goose goose bend neck towards sky sing.
Honky tonk. The couple were having a “lovers’ quarrel.”
The couple were having a “movers’ quarrel.” In the Valley,
the wettest weather occurs in August. What is a boot print if not
evidence? Moose brain is used to cure the pelt. I carry a small jar
of your ashes in my luggage and search out the most beautiful place.
Stolons remain on the ground and become grey ghosts when the snow melts.
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Water Sedge
Carex aquatilis
Drill Lake
Seasonal color. Calico cat at the fence.
The smell of cut grass is the smell of trauma.
Where the throatsinger dives deep and the lake seals over,
where the flecks of yellow metal shine. A grief ago, I woke
early and I worked hard. No matter. The eye dries
after a time. My best friend’s father was the taxidermist.
The smell of cut grass is the smell of trauma.
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Snow Saxifrage
Micranthes nivalis
Dimond Drive
Was a time we built castles, willow branches for spires.
We checked our feet coming in. Was an afternoon he
struck her in the face and spent the rest
of his days contrite. Remember. The road graders
crawled out front with their sweeping lights.
I hid behind a wall in my feather crown, you
in that handsewn cape of twigs and dragonflies.
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Wormwood
Artemisia borealis
Castle Mountain
On empty space: cirrus, shadow,
the firmament. When frost arrived
we fired up the old barrel stove.
I counted out the roots, held
onto the wild sage, the places
you left. The sound of metal
bending. Of all the silver hairs.
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Mastodon Flower
Senecio congestus
Fish Lake
The hairs still the air near the plant.
Iliamna, Kuskokwim, Little Yetna,
Pikmiktalik. And a red flag warning
and gusts, and a caribou path, and a one-
seeded cypsela that does not split open
when the seed is ripe. Black River. I
miss you so. Deshka Landing. Totem Point.
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Woolly Lousewort
Pedicularis lanata
Campbell Creek
There was a long flame in the shape of a lobed leaf.
There was a strong wind overnight in the Valley.
There was a bright yellow taproot.
There was a small group of cattails.
There was a blue crane at the mouth of the Delta.
There was a song coming out of the jail.
There was a field smell.
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Golden Saxifrage
Chrysoplenium tetandrum
Covenant House
Rock breaker. Lichen in every shape and hue. Grows
by spreading. At the end of the pier, a small band.
And where is the fire that burns and burns? And
those words that perform the soothing? Lobes
of the lace flower, mist maiden, kidney-shaped
leaf. And after the root and the wreath, how many
notes among the millions, or pemmican, or tea?
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White Heather
Cassiope tetragona
Chugach Range
Ragged gal scolding the crows. My beloved
at the corner table eating a scone.
Among the shrubbery, mosaic, mechanic, wrecked
wings. And yes it was otherworldly, that green-gold
eye. Near the growing tip. Whenever you move, it makes
a ruffling sound. It makes a good fire. A little light
in the wilderness to illuminate the mounds.
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False Mayweed
Tripleurospermum maritimum
Stickleback Creek
My love, who sleeps the sleep of all.
Eventually, it rains. I hang my beadwork
in the window over the sink.
I rearrange the wool. On a hot day,
when our daughter crosses the sea,
it’s nothing more than a breeze.
Nothing more than a wolf in the lane.
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Arctic Willow
Salix arctica
Glenn Highway
Jumble of nerves. Humps of sphagnum
collecting mist. The nectaries and catkins.
The white shape flashing between trunks
of course, and again. Every old image a shard.
And heliotrope, soft as the moon. Feel good in your skin.
In your footsteps. Because I grew up beside them and they
taught me everything I know.
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Alpine Holy Grass
Anthoxanthum monticola
East Chickaloon Branch Road
A restorer of order, a preserver. And the whole flowering
head shines a bronze color in the sunlight.
If I promise to meet you at the garden gate, who
will fertilize the petunias? Harvest the giant sunflower?
Count the pairs of socks. Roll out the dough in a log and cut
eleven times. Brilliant lake meadow or God, whose arms are too full,
whose arms retreat with the glacier, hear our prayer.
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Arctic Bluegrass
Poa arctica
Wickersham Park
Listen while I talk on. There is an answer
somewhere and I will meet thee on the corner
of Franklin and Veterans’ Memorial Drive. When
I slip on my jumpsuit of ice-worm and raven, please
pick up that old twelve-stringed guitar.
Right whale, Canada warbler, bobwhite, you
can two-step with me all night, bright star.
For more information about this piece, see this issue's legend.
Born and raised in Anchorage, Caroline Goodwin moved to California from Sitka, Alaska in 1999. Her books are Trapline, Peregrine, The Paper Tree, and Custody of the Eyes. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two daughters and Jimi Hendrix the Pug.
61.7936° N, 148.5094° W
No matter the weather, my parents, my brothers, our dog and I headed to Chickaloon nearly every weekend. The marshes of horsetail and wild mint around Drill Lake, the alder groves, the birches that dropped their seed pods onto the snow. Oh, and Castle Mountain with its weird shapes and shadows. Alpenglow, termination dust, cottonwoods, lowbush cranberries, snowshoes, a red-necked grebe, a pair of swans, pine siskins, woodsmoke, kinnikinnik, the cabin with its oil barrel stove. And, always, the distant roar of the Matanuska River, like a freeway or a poem.