She's manifested today like a ghost appearing from a haunted house. Desertion is that inhabited manor from which the voices in her head urge her into exile, urge her phantom existence. Sitting upon the berm overlooking the beach and lighthouse of Coos Bay, she wishes she could ride the setting Pacific sun to New Guinea or beyond. Below five athletic young women contest the physics of a soccer ball, imagining the red-white lighthouse a goal. In other times she'd ask to join them, but she must lose her personal history now, remain hidden in plain sight. The loneliness of this subsistence a charnel house blackening her heart. She's Amelia Earhart about to crash the Yukon's heartbroken cry.
This poem is written for Anna Kanopka, who spent 10 years in exile hiding out in the Yukon Territory from the US Coast Guard.