Ephemerals pt. 4 (awe and otters)

This is the last entry in my “ephemerals” journaling, since early spring is fading in Virginia–where I’ve returned after the Alaska trip and a terrific residency at Storyknife. Quick note toward the future: I’m teaching a three-hour workshop, “Poetry from the Underworld,” via Poet Camp on June 28th, and registration is now open. I promise it’ll be fun and productive.

April 24, 2026

I just roughed out an early draft of my next poetry manuscript (and finally figured out how to automate the Table of Contents in Word—ha!). It’s a long way from done: a little short, so I have more writing underway; there’s a section that might be relatively weak, we’ll see what I think later; and I will just generally need to revise individual poems and think about the flow within sections. I’ll take my time with all of it. But the basic structure makes sense, hitting the beats and ideas I have in mind. Plus I’ve been drafting new poems toward the gaps and, at least for the moment, feel good about most of them. The working title is Spiral Hum.

It’s Friday here and I fly out on Tuesday, so I’m in the home stretch on the Storyknife residency. I’ve had a couple of down days for a variety of reasons, all of which seem inevitable. It rains a lot here in April and gray skies wear on me. Social anxiety in the company of people I’m just getting to know: for sure. The ms contains tough material and spending time with it can be hard emotionally as well as in craft terms. Sometimes drafting a poem is a total joy, an episode of absorption that leaves me exhilarated. Other days it’s a grind to haul the stanzas up the hill. It’s certainly demanding intellectual work to analyze a sheaf of poems and figure out how they could be better versions of themselves. A stretch of two or three hours can burn me out. On a larger scale, I periodically question poetry’s whole enterprise. A question from Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems” always haunts me: “What kind of beast would turn its life into words?” I’m still tracking world news as well as the struggles of my loved ones. What gave me the notion that writing is a good idea, in the face of all that?

Well, the fellowship itself suggests that I should be writing–that at least a few people in the universe want me to. This interval is a rare gift, so gratitude picks me up and set me on my poetic feet again.

I’ve also been reflecting on what about my residency has nourished my desire to write, because in general, it has. For the first time in ages, I have utter privacy to calm down and focus. I know for sure that no one will disturb me all day, though I can wander out and talk to whoever’s around, if I feel like it. Mostly I don’t, until five, when we gather for dinner. We do the dishes after and almost always go out for a walk. Then I’m back to my cabin to write and read. It’s a nice rhythm. And I would like an excellent lunch delivered to my doorstep every day for the rest of my life, please. (I have eaten very well generally, both here and in town—special shout-out to Maura’s salmon, chicken soup, and bison meatloaf; Katie’s baked goods; and the oyster restaurant on the spit.)

An equally important factor is Alaska itself. Awe is some of my most powerful poetry fuel. I crack my door and hear owls and eagles. Scary moose are marching around (don’t even talk to me about bears, who are waking up all over the state and feeling hungry). Yesterday I jumped on one of the staff’s twice-weekly errands to town so I could walk along Beluga Slough and Bishop Beach. I was hoping to find a hag stone, which I did. I filled my pockets with a variety of other pretty rocks and shells, too. I watched sandhill cranes, newly arrived. I found a mysterious feather, now on my windowsill, although I’ll leave it here, especially after learning it could be from a juvenile eagle (illegal to transport). The long stretch of sand and tide pools, distant rollers, and the Aleutian mountains beyond were gorgeous, even on a cold, cloudy day. Once, when my head was down, a raptor’s cry caught my attention. I looked up to see a bald eagle—they’re huge—perched on a carcass only several yards away. It was a dead otter and the eagle was plucking out his eye. Jesus, this is a stark, fierce, awe-inspiring place.

The stimulation of learning also makes a big difference to my happiness and writing inspiration. I’m researching the plants and creatures and other natural features around me. Often little seeds from that research kick off poems or at least show up in them. I’m also talking to people and beginning to grasp some of the deep differences between living in Alaska and in other states. Examples on the minor side: in winter, there’s little to no birdsong—even the gulls disappear, so their return is a big event. If your lab retriever likes to jump into the ocean and swim, you freak out that he’ll get bitten by a seal. Chai comes in two kinds: Alaskan (sweet) and Zen (spicy). There is so much sand and gravel everywhere that there’s absolutely no keeping the floors clean.

On the major side: political, cultural, and geographical difference. You really feel the nearness of Russia, culturally and in Alaska’s strong military presence. The state is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, so earthquakes are a constant worry, especially when there’s so often only one road in and out of population centers. Forest fires and mudslides, too. Glacial retreat is a visible, powerful marker of climate change. It’s important here that Alaskan Native population is substantial (something like 15% compared to 0.1% in Virginia)—although Indigenous history in Alaska as elsewhere has been shaped by profoundly abusive government practices, such as medical experimentation inflicted on people without their consent or knowledge. Storyknife commits to giving 20% of its residencies to Indigenous writers. The diversity of my cohort has shaped my experience here in a good and vital way.

I also appreciate that I’m the only one of six fellows with an academic job in an English Department. Like the Storyknife staff, the members of my cohort are so interesting to talk to. I’m not in a bubble.

April 25, 2026

My second favorite Homer experience—after seeing the aurora—was watching wildlife on Kachemak Bay this morning. Four of us hired a water taxi guy: Curtis, from a place on the spit called Mako’s. He spent years of his life first as a research biologist and then as a halibut fisherman, and he seemed almost as delighted by the trip as we were. Because it was a small boat, we saw so much close up, and even stopped on a remote beach for a while to walk around, find eagle and otter tracks, and gaze at a ghost forest, petrified in the ’64 tsunami. I have to say, mother sea otters rafting along with babies on their bellies are pretty charming, as was a harbor seal flopping around on an empty dock. But I also love guillemots with their lipstick-red legs; the crazed cries of the murres and kittiwakes; and of course the bald eagles posing on cliffs and treetops. On the way back to Storyknife, the taxi driver regaled us with more stories of bear attacks and being stalked by a wolf (“paw tracks as big as my hand!”). Turns out that what he’s afraid of are crevasses. They also eat people, but you can’t shoot them. He won’t mess with those glacier hikes.

After lunch, I don’t seem to be writing, but that’s okay. I wrote my letter to future residents in the cabin guest book, called home, drank tea, and read. I’m nearing the end of a great novel by one of the other residents, Under Nushagak Bluff by Mia Heavener. She’s telling a story about Yup’ik women in an Alaskan village in the 1940s, as ways of life are changing. The sense of place is exceptional, and her characters are intense personalities, as vivid and take-no-prisoners as the landscape.

April 27, 2026

Last stint at the window desk before I shift the furniture back and finish packing. It’s raining, so no glorious sunset. I’m sorry I can’t say goodbye to the volcanoes, especially Augustine, a solitary cone that seems so small from here, compared to Iliamna—although it turns out to be the tallest, at 11,000 feet. From here, it’s the shyest, most likely to hide behind clouds.

It has been a few degrees warmer these last days, and some of the grass is greening up. I wish I could see fireweed bloom! I know from a brief trip to Iceland a few years ago, though, that the midnight sun is not good for anxious, wound-up people who already have trouble sleeping, ahem, so maybe the April residency offered to me was lucky timing. I suspect the ideal time to visit Alaska would be September, when it’s not yet cold but there is some darkness (and the hordes of tourists have departed).

Mia, who’s a water treatment engineer as well as a writer, described how tough it is to do the necessary work each year in Alaska’s short warm season. Many villages in Native Alaska don’t have running water—the need is dire. Her team schemes and designs all winter, then the rush is on to build everything before deep cold returns. This year the ground in relatively balmy Homer froze eight feet deep. The thaw is taking a while, which jacks up the work pressure.  

My first plane leaves at 9 am tomorrow morning (theoretically). I’m not a teary person in my cynical middle age, but I’m emotional tonight.

May 2, 2026

I’m back, trying to reset my body clock and catch up with tasks I put off. I need to stop trying to get on top of my email, actually. That’s a mug’s game. I have writing to do.

I was shocked by the green lushness as soon as we started driving home from Dulles. Not a bald eagle in sight, though plenty of vultures to do the scavenging. When we arrived at home, Carolina chickadees were squabbling with our cardinal duo, and the groundhog showed up to nose around. All ordinary, but it felt strange.

Today I took a walk in the nearest woods. Spring ephemeral season is nearly over here, the most delicate of the wildflowers having subsided to leaf. I missed the dogwood blossoming almost entirely. I glimpsed two fawns through the trees, with those white spots that fade oh so quickly.