Li Bai Rides a Celestial Dolphin Home

Tom Sexton

• Publisher: University of Alaska Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781602233652
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía

"On the night Li Bai tried to embrace the moon / in its fullness on the surface of the Yangtze River, / blossoms scented the air, and beyond the moon / pale stars powdered the sky. That faint shiver / of white near the surface was a dolphin rising. / I carry a book of his poems whenever I travel, / poems that touch the heart like a gentle snow. / Look, over there in that marsh, a snowy egret rising."?The day after their wedding, Tom and Sharyn Sexton set off on the more than 4, 500-mile journey from Massachusetts to Alaska. Now, more than fifty years later, Tom Sexton is retracing those steps through his exceptional poetry. He describes the communities they passed through and ruminates on the changes, good and bad, that have taken place in the decades since. He still finds hope in the country and draws transformative hope from the land that connects all of us.
Appropriate for a journey that moves from east to west, the Sexton's real-life voyage is embedded in the imaginary journey of the ancient Chinese poet, Li Bai, from Broad Pass to Polychrome Pass in the Alaska Range.

The Night Sky

Richardson Homestead

In Memory of John and Jo Haines

1.

From the window of the cabin he built

using the wide planks of an old bridge,

they watched the light narrow, day

after day, until another long winter arrived

and hunger sat between them at the table,

like an uninvited guest who refuses to leave,

until their nerves rattled like chains

and the last fat disappeared from the pot.

He waited for good news to arrive in the mail.

She painted birds on small pieces of bark.

Wearing her bright red hat, the one I saw

in a photograph, she was the first to leave.

He could be as cold as ice, indifferent.

A couple from Fairbanks bought the place.

2.

The last time I stopped, what remained of the cover

of their old greenhouse was flapping in the wind

like the sail of a Viking longship arrived to carry

their lingering spirits over Banner Dome,

over the blood-red tundra they knew so well,

over the ghosts of the ancient Dorset people,

over the vanishing polar ice and into the star-

timbered shaft we know as myth where Odin

waits with a raven sitting on each shoulder

while the poet Bragi plucks a harp made of stone.

Black-Capped Chickadee

A black-capped chickadee rises from October’s tall grass

its feathers gray as the cold fog beginning to lift after three days.

From the ridge where I’m walking, I can see the homeless camp below.

Paper Birch

Oldest of all the trees in our yard,

it was a spindly sapling on that snowy

day when we moved in many years ago.

Now it’s a candelabra for the stars

when winter nights are long and deep.

When the days begin to lengthen, leaves

appear overnight, or so it always seems.

October’s gold drifts down while we sleep.

Christmas Wolves

Close enough to the city that we could hear

traffic, three wolves, motionless, like stone,

watched as we entered a small clearing.

The largest, the color of frost, was flanked

by the others so they could easily close

on us or vanish into the woods. They didn’t

move as they watched us hurry away. “Don’t

tell anyone,” my wife whispered, “not a soul.”

Rime Ice

If angels exist, even the imaginary kind,

I imagine they’d come down on a night

such as this when everything’s covered

with rime: those glowing lanterns

I saw hanging from a mountain ash,

the antenna on my neighbor’s roof.

They’d hold their great wings wide,

feathered with light, lighter than rime.

Making Applesauce on a Snowy Afternoon

Who was first to bring the scent of simmering

apples sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar

together? Could it have been Adam and Eve

in their cold hut outside the Gates of Eden?

Was it the serpent trying to make amends?

Let the snow fall and the cold wind blow

until all the kitchen windows disappear.

My applesauce is simmering on the stove.

Common Merganser on a Winter Morning

The merganser, with the iridescent-green head

and orange beak that reminded me of the orange

I hoped to find at the bottom of my Christmas stocking

when I was a boy should have migrated to open water

when the lagoon began to freeze. Yesterday it was still

diving in a small iris of swiftly moving water.

Would I have felt this way when I was young?

Its underbody was as white as new snow.

Snow Squall

At dusk, a feint, a swirl of flakes, before

the wind quickened and the squall arrived,

a great white bear slipping one paw through

a slightly open window, while its other paw

tried the door before retreating with a hiss.

When the wind eased, we opened the door.

It was now a boat being rowed to the west.

Star...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Driving North
• Under Heaven’s River
• Two Photographs
• The Night Sky
• About the Author