I saw a reading of this on the literature program with Conan O’Brien, and I really thought it was deep and thought provoking!
Here it is, an untitled poem by S. Palin who, according to speculation, left her last job to run for Poet Laureate in 2012.
Soaring through nature’s finest show
Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun.
And then the extremes.
In the winter time it’s the frozen road
That is competing with the view of
Ice fogged frigid beauty,
The cold though, doesn’t it split
the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?
And then in the summertime
Such extreme summertime
About a hundred and fifty degrees hotter
Than just some months ago, and
Than just some months from now, with
Fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and
Merciless rivers that are rushing and carving and
Reminding us that here,
Mother Nature wins.
It is as throughout all Alaska that
Big wild good life teeming along the road
That is north to the future.
I could try for a million years, and I could never ever write anything like that. You betcha.
Being Arbitrary 