At Night, Revisiting Our Dead Husbands

-After Ada Limón’s, “Midnight, Talking About Our Exes”

The sky is bright as if mid-afternoon.
Two foxes, one cross, one silver, play
freeze tag on the stairs and porch
of an empty school entry, romp
into the blankness of a full-mooned
whiteout, territorial hunters
on this gale-swept plain.

(Or what we name the way
we move forward.)

Let’s be foxes tonight, or foxy,
venture from our dens of silent walls,
skirt roadside clearings, wild-eyed
and curious of all the other
beyond what we once had.
All of our chase and cajole
cannot hush the anguish of death
nor can time.
When all that remains is the hour,
let us be the poems of survival,
let us cavort in our wild
under the dimmed outline
of circumstantial stars.

Alaskan Poet, Moon Gazer, Raven Watcher, Northern Trekker, Teacher. Kersten Christianson derives inspiration from wild, wanderings, and road trips. Kersten is the poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak. She authored Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2020), What Caught Raven’s Eye (Petroglyph Press, 2018), and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017).  Kersten lives with her daughter in Sitka, Alaska.