Anchorage Aubade    by  Deborah S. Greenhut

Here, where there is no night,
we are trying to reinvent our love.
At the near-top of the world in the midnight sun,
when do the cocks sleep?
We cannot tell the rising from the setting.
An unforgiving spotlight reveals all of our parts.
Although we seek landmark divisions,
we find no orifice, no skin,
no delineation, no nipple,
just pure, sunlit, body to body,
exhausted in the white light
of always day. No respite
from our glacial, topless dream.

At midnight, it is still light, still today.
There is no possibility of resolving for tomorrow,
so I have to make a choice. Shall we stay coupled?
Who knew how much the darkness counted?

In dreams our cherished dawn and dusk return,
and we find a plausible route through shadows
to the next shoals of our aging shores.
As orca imprints blare on mountain faces,
the earth can rise up sharply from the sea,
the way we rise up against and to each other
like dolphins, seeking the breathable spaces
between our flows to let love in for another season.

Here, we cast the last blinding twenty years overboard,
and grope toward one caliginous harbour, while light
calves a new idea from what froze before.

© Deborah S. Greenhut (U.S.A.)