Idée Fixe, Alaska

      by Susan Stevens


At night, we'd watch the fluttering Northern Lights—
Sinuous, like ribbons, they used to say,
yet a sight too strong for any known simile.
Beyond all renderings in words, these nights:
Nights that long could occupy a man
in drink that loosed his mind—never mind
a night chromatic-streaked; a man could blind
himself by day in untilled snow, which ran
with skylights all the way to Idaho.
Knaves, eccentrics, fugitives: Their trick
was to escape to such a place and settle low,
whipping in and out of view, like arctic
skies in flux. This nighttime flickering show
I see redoubled. Tell me: man's a mimic.