Going to Alaska

The jacaranda are wet with color,
and the heat is a great paint brush
lending color to our lives,
and to the air, and to our faces;

but I'm going to Alaska
where there's snow to suck
the sound out from the air.

Up, yes, in the branches,
the purple blossoms,
go pale at the edges;
there is meaning in the shifting
of the sap, and I see in them traces
of last year, but then they hadn't grown
so strong, and their limbs
were more like wires. Now they are cables.
thick and alive with alien electricity,

and I am going to Alaska,
where you can go blind
just by looking at the ground,
where fat is eaten by itself
just to keep the body warm.

Because from where we are now,
it seems, really, that everything is growing
in a thousand different ways;
that the soil is soaked through
with old blood and with relatives
who were buried here, or close to here,
and they are giving rise to what is happening.
Or can you tell me otherwise?

I am going to Alaska, where the animals can kill you,
but they do so in silence, as though if no-one hears them,
then it really won't matter. I am going to Alaska.
They tell me that it's perfect for my purposes.

John Darnielle
from Taboo VI - The Homecoming.

Hear the song at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCR6DTbcpik&NR=1

Image courtesy of David Tuffley at http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~davidt/redlandbay/trees.htm