When I was younger, the sky and everything in it was like the sea. The clouds were boats and often vast, sprawling armadas would fan out across the sea. Other times, the sky was a busy seaport with fleets of trading vessels, frigates, and exploration ships. Of course, it could very easily remind me of the future and of some large bustling spaceport. Clouds cans take on amazing shapes and sometimes, lo and behold, a massive freighter that you saw as child in some sci-fi movie is floating across the sky. I still tend to see the sea and outer space when I look into a cloudy sky.

The most vivid memory I have of being in Alaska almost ten years ago was the crystalline azure color of the bottom of a glacier that I saw dangling off the edge of a mountain on the Kenai Peninsula. I couldn't take my eyes off it as we drove by. I also remember how expansive the landscape was. Incredible. It made the vistas of Upstate New York seem completely claustrophobic when I returned home.

I thought about that glacier the other night while talking to this wonderful girl about birds. She was going on at length about some Macaw and I kept bringing up the Albatross. Then the Arctic Tern. And then the Bald Eagle. Which led me to Alaska. My mind often turns these impressive cartwheels and hand-springs whenever I am talking to a girl and there is a smidgen of potential for any manner of relation. And I will try and let the contents of my rather uninteresting mind try and crowd out the reality of my simple lack of appeal.

Someone can make just the smallest mention of her in conversation and my ears will perk. Despite that, I will always refer to her casually and with a forced hint of indifference...because I simply cannot admit out loud how much I adore her. Of course, she is constantly on my mind and I am constantly trying to dislodge those thoughts. They are plainly impossible thoughts. As impossible as an anarchist victory in America. As impossible as me writing excellent verse.

She is some wonderful Stevia or Golden Fennel plant that will not tolerate my Winter.
I lose sight of her in the distances, where the land evaporates at the horizon. I lose her in the cornfields, in the hay-lots, and along the bottom of creeks in milk-colored Spring-time waters.

She is a cosmonaut, an acrobat, an explorer. I am a miner, a mason, a farmer.
She is the distant Green star. It is amazing enough that I am even aware of her existence.

This evening, I can only tell you that
Stars do not cluster like a Maple's
Whirlygigs in the Spring-time sod;
Nor do they cling like
The traces of snow crust
To the edges of hedgerows
In the early Spring Sun.

The afternoon sky was the color of the water that one would rinse their paintbrushes in while painting in elementary school. Remember it? There would be a cup full of water that you'd swirl your brush in to rinse off the current paint color before moving onto the next. The water was always a milky purple-grey.

And Kodak's smokestacks seemed to be feeding that color into the sky.

And another of my friends is engaged. But that is a topic for another day.