The End of the Earth
I’ve completed two months as a Jesuit Volunteer in rural Alaska. As I continue to find my experiences difficult to summarize, here is a poem-reflection on my first encounters.
Bethel, Alaska
They say it’s not the end of the earth…
But you can see it from here.
Out across the undulating grasses
The mossy ground
Littered with lonely lakes
Traveling on and on and on
Perhaps ending somewhere just out of sight
Small graying houses, perched on their stilts
Like flamingos standing in the water
Clustered together for companionship
Neighborhoods standing in solidarity
Their Red and Green roofs are the only skyline
The dust, the mud,
The silt- a thousand times finer than sand
Seeps into your skin, your hair, your clothes
And sticks
Impossible to wash off,
Carry these places with you forever
The roads end.
Taper off. Stop. The end of town, then end…
Is this the end of the earth?
Or can I see if from here?
What should I be looking for?
They say it’s not the end of the earth…
But you can see it from here.
Not so early anymore
The holy spirit stretches her wings
Across the morning sky
Breathing life into an infant day
And warming the world with a precious light
In the freshly filleted fish
Hanging out to dry
Carrying the summer’s bounty long into winter
Even a hostile land provides sustenance
Subsistence from above
Berry Pickers dot the land
Plucking fistfuls of blue or black or red bounty
From that ground many have called desolate
Tossing hundreds of the fuites rouges into buckets
Actions become life-giving prayer,
Written off and forgotten.
Isolated by choice
Or culture
Or geography
Or poverty
A place where the roads end.
They say it’s not the end of the earth…
But you can see it from here.
Or might it be its own beginning
A place where the roads begin
Swelling with God on the tundra.
Photo: “Alaskan Tundra” by images of life from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)
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