Explication

2.

I have a broadside signed by Haines of “Poem of the Forgotten.” Years ago, shortly after Haines’s death, I bid on it in a silent auction and won.

I’m not entirely happy about owning it. Haines may loom large on the Interior Alaskan literary landscape, but in my house that broadside hangs in the back corner of the basement, tucked away on a wall just in front of the gun safe.

The poem irritates me. Haines’s confidence, his certainty that he belonged in Alaska and that Alaska belonged to him makes me narrow my eyes and shake my head. Who gets to feel that way? I ask, but only inside my head.

I don’t use the gun safe often, so I don’t have to look at the poem too much. I don’t know why I framed it. Maybe it was the crabbed signature. A feeling of obligation? It’s a signed broadside by John-fucking-Haines, after all.

Here in Interior Alaska, the poets all knew Haines. They have stories, mostly reverent. They shake their heads appreciatively, smile. Sometimes they acknowledge how damn difficult he could be. Some still have their hackles up over his own famous hackles. Most seem to see him through a haze, imagining themselves each the silent owl, sitting beside him in a shadowy spruce, with a drifting moon and a muttering river nearby.

I can’t even imagine flying beside Haines, looking down on the snow. In my mind he’s always floating, above or beyond, toward Asia, or somewhere else so far from the reality of my family-tethered Alaska life that I have to hold my hand up to shade my eyes when I look for him.

I do have to look at the broadside occasionally. On the other side of the drywall behind it is the nook under the stairs where I stash a pile of Capri Suns and granola bars I bought on sale at Costco. Snacks for swim practice, a duty I undertake to fulfill my required parental volunteer hours, so I can avoid paying additional fees to my now-teenaged daughter’s swim team.

I still see Haines because of swimming.

Maybe I framed it out of respect for my own hackles. Some Saturday mornings, bending to fill a canvas bag with snacks, I reread the poem and think to myself, That arrogant attitude toward nature is why the world’s ending, shake my head, and then try to go on with my life.