Hamill, Sam

English

University of Montana

CutBank Volume 1 Issue 9 CutBank 9 Article 9 Fall 1977 Letter to Nancy Steele from Alaska Sam Hamill Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cutbank  Part of the Creative Writing Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Hamill, Sam (1977) "Letter to Nancy Steele from Alaska," CutBank: Vol. 1 : Iss. 9 , Article 9. Available at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cutbank/vol1/iss9/9 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in CutBank by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact scholarworks@mso.umt.edu. Sam HamillLETTER TO NANCY STEELE FROM ALASKAHigh above the low, smoky-blue February clouds, a single-prop plane whines through the afternoon toward another falling sun.The city streets, we with rain and soft half-melted ice, teem with weekend traffic. Paradise is Celsius one degree.I’m told the ravens here live ninety years or more.Unashamed, they congregate to feast on refuse in the street, strutting through the gutters beside booted, scurrying feet, twisting their scuffled necks to point one angry haywire eye at any sign of intrusion from any passerby.They long outlast the fireweed that blazes in the hills, the handsome magpies with long delicate tails gliding low across a thousand summer fields.They survive on terror and legend and shout with a cracking voice, saving their finest songs for the orchestra of their wings.Stunted Sitka spruce grow dense beyond the edge of town. Their limbs are green, no sign of snow, their trunks more slender than a thigh.Here and there, a grove of birch thrusts ominous30Sam Hamillblack and spidery boughs from trunks as pale as cream.In the m oonlight on a clearcold night they ringlike the ghost o f  a deathly chime.Standing in the roadside shadow,half lost in the shadows of trees,bewildered or amused, an old cow moosenibbles her winter grasswatching the rushing trafficheaded for Eagle Riveror for Chugiak. Her great earsslowly turn at a horn or ata diesel stack. Wide, her nostrilsflare with every massive breath.The last timid rays of daylight limp across the peaks. A nother plane falls into night with a shriek.I remember the insane flat roads of Iowa, the legends that went sour.I remember the heat of the south, the bright autum n-in-M ontana tam arack. The night falls thick and black about me, cold as a raven’s wing. The rented sheets are cool across my back. I sleep to dream  unsettling dreams, hoping all these aching, aging bones can make the next town, somehow, home.31

Letter to Nancy Steele from Alaska

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1350&amp;context=cutbank

Letter to Nancy Steele from Alaska

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Montana