Elizabeth Laborde
	Alaskan Sun                           I   I wake to darkness.                            II   At dawn, purple-greens spill from the horizon to the tree line to the ice floes below.                            III   The river is metal.                           IV   The sun rises, orange blue, at noon, bending in an arch, malingering in the trees, never reaching the sky.                           V   At three o’clock, Village Hill swal- lows the sun, a boa enfolding an egg.                           VI   In twilight I walk home.  Leafless alders, sickly chromatids, gray under a non-existent sun.                            VII   I run to stay warm, the moon gliding between branches, seizing the snow.                           VIII   Crystals glow under moonlight; colors without names live on snow.  I look away. Among Natives     A.M. Homes writes about things you should know, stories of shoulds with ten thousand words built on piles of snow.   There are things I do not know.   I do not know the path, the direction up middle hill.   Each day, I wake amidst natives I do not know.  I walk along the Kuskokwim River, without reading the wind on the water or the undertow.   I do not understand Yupik, huskies and malamutes attached to metal chains they cannot chew through. I walk past them, squashing the tundra beneath a trail I never seem to know.