Alaska Awakening – A Poem

The boat moved through the water,

making no sound. The only noises

were the sound of wind and

the crack of ice in the distance.

The water was almost frozen and had

taken on an almost gel-like quality.

It looked as if it would hold my weight

should I happen to fall into it,

the coldness of it carrying me onward.

There were birds flying through the

air around us and the sun

was so bright, so brilliant,

that I almost had to shield my eyes

against its luminosity.

As we approached the mountains,

the boat moving silently

though the almost frozen water,

the mountains became bigger

and the glaciers atop of them

shone in all shades of blue and white,

telling stories of how they

came to be and where they came from.

I held my husbands’ hand

and watched the mountains and glaciers

become even bigger as we moved closer

and was struck with the stories

that they could tell,

the tales that they could weave

of what had come before.

I thought to myself:

‘They were here when time began. They were here when the world was formed and have endured.’

Looking at the land before me,

thousands of miles of rock and ice

that lay uninhabited and filled the horizon,

so much larger than our boat and so much bigger

than myself.

The world back home seemed foreign

and time stood still.

I looked at the shades of blue within the ice,

at the land that had moved and shaped itself

over time immortal

and thought to myself:

‘How very small I am. I am but a second in the span of time, a pinprick of light, merely a drop of water within the ocean of the world.’

I looked at the world around me that

had been waiting for me all this time

and felt tears come to my eyes.

I could only cry as there were no words

to describe what I was seeing.

My tears fell to the water,

becoming one with the frozen waters.

My spirit sighed in contentment,

soaking up the light of that Alaskan sun,

feeling awake as it never had

before.