Aialik

Aialik

I reject the notion
that God is a dude,
but today when he spoke,
he was a he,
his voice the voice
of an Alaskan guide, 
guy named Buddy.

We paddled years ago,
me, Buddy, and my sisters 
to the threshold of Aialik Glacier
to watch her break apart. 

Buddy was ever
tolerant of our antics—
river of chatter,
exuberant splashing,
freestyle race to push
berg bits ashore—

but he spoke once
with the voice of guide.
We obeyed him like
the voice of God.
Be quiet was all it took.

We fell into stillness,
so thick and warm,
it melted the ice.
Aialik heaved,
calving cosmologies
into the waiting bay.

If God was watching,
he must have seen me
break apart.
If God is watching,
he must see I am still
breaking apart, 
still finding my way
back to water. 

Today, when my mind
drowned my surroundings,
his voice broke in like falling ice, 
like a crash of stillness,
sudden quiet of being. 
I’m tired of being
a brain in this world.
I’m ready to melt,
ready to freeze.
I’m ready to do it all
again. 
  

The Prompt

Water shows up in several forms in the poem above: as a glacier, breaking apart. As the bay, waiting to receive the house-sized chunks of ice sporadically crashing into it. As the berg bits. Rebekah Jensen and I really were just crazy enough to plunge into the bay to see who could retrieve a berg bit and push it to shore the fastest. Because I am humble and diplomatic, and also because my sister supersedes me in virtually all arenas and I don’t want to inspire her to shove that in my face, I won’t tell you who won. But I will tell that you Buddy the Alaskan guide said that in all his years there, he had never seen anyone else stick their head into that water. I think he was an only child and didn’t understand the warming effect of sibling rivalry.

If you would like a prompt to play with today, then I offer you water, in all its variations. The water freezing on the road, the glacier melting into the bay, the dew drop clinging to grass, the grass (mostly water) clinging to the dewdrop.

How many times and ways have you encountered water already today? Look around you and imagine for a moment that every water molecule glowed blue. What might the space around you look like then? What might you look like, dear body of water that you are?

Spend some conscious time with water today. Sit by your favorite creek or lake or other body of water. Take a warm bath. Or simply drink a glass of water slowly. Feel it pour down your throat. Pause to wonder, if you’d like, how much of your pharynx, esophogaus, and stomach are already made of water, and how it is that a container of water holds water. What if all of your water were to turn to ice? What if all the ice in the world were to turn to water? If every cloud were to fall as rain all at once?

What if every water droplet could be expanded to the size of a book, and in its pages you could read the whole of its history—learn about every body of water (ocean, grass, human, bird) of which it has been a part?

When is water soothing to you? When is it exciting? Intimidating? Terrifying? Make a list, if you’d like, of ten or so memories that swirl to mind surrounding water. What features do they share in common? How do these memories differ? How do they make you feel?

Give yourself time to swim, float, or flail in as many (or as few) of these questions and imaginings as you’d like. Take your time. There’s no rush, really. We all begin and end (and begin again) as water. Allow whatever wants to float to the surface to float to the surface until you find your pen floating (or faltering) across the page. Where does the river take you? I would love to read your poems and reflections in the comments!

A Note About Where We’re Headed

I started 100 Poems on a whim. I knew I wanted to write 100 or more poems this year, and I was committed to doing so, since I was participating in a local workshop in which that was one of the stated goals. It dawned on me that it would be fun to have a few people to share my poems with and even more fun if they wanted to join in the writing and share their poems back. I couldn’t believe my luck when 25 or so lovely humans subscribed right out of the gate. Your poems, your comments, and the honor of your time and attention have been such gifts to me this year. Thank you!

As I look ahead to 2025, I can feel my writing goals shifting. I’m wrapping up a revision of one novel and reentering the querying trenches. I’m beginning to write a second novel. And I feel a pull to go back to the 350 or so poems I’ve written in the past two years and spend some time revising, polishing, and compiling. As many of you know, I put together a poetry collection back in May and submitted it for the James Baker Hall Book Award. It didn’t win, but I did end up being a finalist. I could do some light edits and upgrades of that collection, but I’m feeling the pull to do something bigger and more ambitious—possibly a full length poetry collection that also includes a prompt to go along with each poem, much like what happens here on 100 Poems. I love how this space has felt like a conversation. I love getting to hear your voices. I am wondering how a book might accomplish something similar. If you happen to know of any poetry collections like this that offers up pairings of poems and prompts so that the reader is invited into conversation with each of the poems, please send the titles my way! I’d love to learn from what other writers have done.

All of this is simply to say that I am so grateful for you and for this space, and I will continue to show up to this space in the year ahead, and given all that I’m working on, I’m going to scale down from posting twice a week to posting once a week (on the weekend) in 2025. I am sure there will be an occasional extra midweek post and perhaps a few posts only for paid subscribers (because oh my gosh, it blows my mind and makes my heart break open with gratitude that some of you are actually giving me money to do this!), but for the most part, you’ll just be hearing from me on weekends next year. Technically, I guess I should change the name of this Substack to 52 poems, but meh, I’ve never been one for worrying about technicalities. And in any case, I am still eager to cheerlead you in your writing goals, whatever they are—100 poems, 52 poems, 100 revisions, or 1 poem that you finally feel brave enough to share. If you have a goal or intention for the year ahead or would like to share anything about what you’ve done in this almost-finished year, please drop a note in the comments!

Wow, that was a lot of words. If you read them, may blessings rain down upon you!