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THE BIRCH By Eric Gordon Johnson, Anchorage An aged tree stood at the side of the road. Fist sized stones ringed its feet, beads on a rosary. White tattered paper bark fluttered in the breeze, frayed crepe from a long past feast. One black branch pointed to where I’d been, another to where I was […]

QUIET MOUNTAIN for Shawn Lyons Poem by Jim Hanlen, Anchorage He introduced me to the yin, the wet side of the mountain and its yang. Not that it mattered to him but I preferred the dry side to scale.   We talked about why some people like to live on the muddy side of their

MORNING CHORES By Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan, Palmer Snowflakes land on my face, Tiny pinpricks of sky. Still dark, the wind is down, temperatures up, Five degrees and The horses are hungry. The dogs romp in the snow Before getting down to the business of Walking horses from the barn to their feeders. Weather is a constant

OPEN By Justine Pechuzal, Seward   When you feel ready you can open your eyes.   When you feel ready when you feel when you ready when   you   you can open can open open your eyes.   When you feel ready you can open your eyes. I can.

COURAGE HAIKU By Mandy Ramsey, Haines   Mountain slides to sea in fertile winter darkness broken town unites. ~ Why bright lights go out my broken heart needs to know Have they become stars? ~ Sunlight greets my eyes my courage tattered and torn Yet we have survived. ~ Enjoy each moment Every day a

SKATING AFTER MANY MOONS By Marybeth Holleman, Anchorage it’s a small lake, a pond, really, or not even that, a wet meadow in summer where our one kind of frog that contains some kind of antifreeze in its veins lives, the only one can survive this far north, our only amphibian, only cold-blooded being, and

SEPTEMBER HARBINGER By Sarah Isto, Juneau On the third morning that dawn frost stiffens yellow leaves on the path my daughter again hurries her oatmeal to scramble down to the creek in hope of being first to bring the news. A quarter hour and I see her careful return upturned hands stiff at her waist,

AS THE CROW FLIES By Peter Kaufmann, Homer   All that black and shiny knowing that the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line. From the first beat of heart to the stillness of last breath, laughter, tears, a slow blink apart   The spiral curl of ammonite emerges from crumbling bluff,

WEATHERED By Susan Campbell, Fairbanks The world weathers us — wind, water, sun and rain, delight, desire, grief and longing scour and scrape, a continual chafing. We resist exposure, shield ourselves, until the constant rasp of time reveals our ragged edges, vulnerable to more weather, more wearing away. Then what? Slowly, sometimes, a gradual uncovering,

EXPECTANCY By Thomas Pease, Anchorage   It’s March, but still too early. No nectar to nourish the depleted hummingbird, probing skeletal blueberry plants. No open water to bathe the trumpeter swan, webbed feet now improvised snowshoes, goose-stepping (the indignity!) across the frozen lake. The myth of the early bird shatters, its only reward starvation, freezing,