#MIDDLEBURY
Letter to the Northern Lights
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
The light here on earth keeps us plenty busy: a fire
in central Pennsylvania still burns bright since 1962.
Whole squads of tiny squid blaze up the coast of Japan
before sunrise. Of course you didn’t show when we went
searching for you, but we found other lights: firefly,
strawberry moon, a tiny catch of it in each other’s teeth.
Someone who saw you said they laid down
in the middle of the road and took you all in,
and I’m guessing you’re used to that – people falling
over themselves to catch a glimpse of you
and your weird mint-glow shushing itself over the lake.
Aurora, I’d rather stay indoors with him – even if it meant
a rickety hotel and its wood paneling, golf carpeting
in the bathrooms, and grainy soapcakes. Instead
of waiting until just the right hour of the shortest
blue-night of the year when you finally felt moved
enough to collide your gas particles with sun particles –
I’d rather share sunrise with him and loon call
over the lake with him, the slap of shoreline threaded
through screen windows with him. My heart
slams in my chest, against my shirt – it’s a kind
of kindling you’d never be able to light on your own.
About this poem
“The epistolary poem underscores the best intimacies that can arise from a letter: the measured and focused address to a specific recipient. This epistle is from a series addressed to various elements from the natural world that obviously cannot respond. I like to think of writing epistles as a writing toward – and attempting to love, or at least recognize – the strangers that live inside each of us.” – Aimee Nezhukumatathil
About Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of “Lucky Fish” (Tupelo Press, 2011). She is the Grisham writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi and lives in Oxford, Miss.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
