Bering Sea Luminosity
by Karla Linn Merrifield
thy name is
midnight sun
waning moon
my candle in Time’s window
into ring of fire
tectonic plates
one heart a soul
bodies of influence
what is the skin between us
my shimmer
your mirroring
where my sky light
why your sea deep
coming coming waves
lengths intervals
celestially earthly
novae volcanic
love in the physics
shine shining
to have shone
us in this Universe
once upon glow
PHOTO: Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, with volcano and seabird by John Matzick, used by permission.
NOTE: The Aleutian Islands are a chain of 14 large volcanic islands and 55 smaller islands. Most of the Aleutian Islands belong to Alaska, but some belong to the Russian federal subject of Kamchatka Krai. They extend about 1,200 miles westward from the Alaska Peninsula toward the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, and mark a dividing line between the Bering Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The islands, with their 57 volcanoes, form the northernmost part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem aboard the MV National Geographic Orion while on a Lindblad expedition in Summer 2019 across the Bering Sea from Alaska to the Russian Far East and back. We sailed the entire length of the Alaskan Aleutian Archipelago, journeying along the Pacific Rim and passing volcano upon volcano, constantly cognizant of Earth’s shifting plates below the hull and along the horizon.
PHOTO: The author on an Aleutian Island in the Bering Sea (Summer, 2019).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Karla Linn Merrifield has had 800+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the 2019 full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. In early 2021, her Half a World of Kisses will be published by Truth Serum Press (Australia) under its new Lindauer Poets imprint. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). Find her on Twitter @LinnMerrifiel and on Facebook @LinnMerrifiel.
POETRY and PLACES 