Susitna slumbers high above Anchorage,
dreaming of her beloved, who took a javelin
to the gut the day before their wedding.
And you, biking home from work tonight,
are 20 minutes late. If you die, who will
cover me in snow and trees? Who will keep
me sleeping, with you not there to weight
the room?
At the Crow Creek Gold Mine,
I found three flakes of gold, you, four, all seven
included in our plastic baggie practice packets.
We walked a trail of rusted shovels to a cold
river, singing “sluicebox, sluicebox” because
we liked the sound. We returned to a wedding
reception with a DJ and cake.
If I could marry
you, I would marry you in a river full of gold.
Inside one ghost cabin, a tiny balance scale
weighed a nugget and two pennies. On the wall,
a black and white photo of someone’s mother.
Your face mirrored the glass and the music
kept playing. Trail maps, table of lanterns,
bear pelt bed and foggy moonshine bottles.
And we wed and wed and wed.