I didn’t know I needed to travel so far
A cup of coffee in a Sunday café
That was all I needed to explain
the things I found inside myself

But how could I know if I remained behind
Next to a fence deciding which side I’m on
And I knew that it was both
I can come and go,
remembering you either way

Mile markers waving goodbye
The top of the world,
white caps and wilderness
I knew where I was from,
what I was to become;
will you walk with me?

Winter carved summers underneath my feet
Glaciers waving to the lakes left behind
So much, the melancholy of nature
But I wasn’t sad,
No I was not

I longed to tell you something
I wasn’t gone; only away
But in everything I find new
I was reminded of why I love you

the walls of the inside passage
look the same from sound to straight
tugs and plugs dot the coastline
as the quartermaster rolls
giving time for evening glare  

pods are in sequence
as the high tail smashes and jaws at the krill
white bellies and sea cows bob and weave
as bow heads glide over haida gwaii  

northern lights dance
and tlingit chant
as the tide settles softly on savory shores
their getting hungry in hoonah
as the blue back and beating drums
mark the life blood of the sea  

driftwood nets
and sitka spruce
surround the cook house
ravens and tinhorns
man the scullery
kerosene lamps flicker
as clam shells roast
on open flames  

villagers stroll
on pebbled sand
in the harbor of souls
where ships set sail
on might and mass
into the steady winds
of the golden skies

ice fields (to the north)
of kryptonite blue
cutting hills at
a glacial pace
knuckle clouds
above the snowline
where warlocks
craft a hidden trade  

trappers, skinners
muscle shoals
grizzly feasts
in kodiak bowl
determined pilgrims
on a dead horse trail
in search of gold
the holy grail

i'll be home soon. i need to be surrounded by emptiness and bitter cold so i can think about something other than you and your angelic soul and how i'm so in love with you that i can't think straight anymore because you don't love me back

i could go all the way up north
to the oil fields where alaska
meets the arctic ocean and
i would still be reminded
of you with every wave,
every breath that freezes in
the air,
every drop of oil that pollutes
the water.

i could go all the way up north
to the oil fields where alaska
meets the arctic ocean and
i still wouldn't be far enough
away from you.

-z. vega

Didn't write this one, but its spirit cannot be undone

*She reads poetry in her pajamas
And laughs when there is no joke
She runs away from the rain
And dances in cigarette smoke

Pictures never capture
The whisps of silver hair
Surrounding her face
And following her everywhere

She never dreams when she sleeps
Only when she's holding *****
She drives around in the prairie hills
With a childish smile
After all, what has she got to lose?

Greens, yellows, blues
Indescribable hues
Soft beautiful, no less
Laying under the stars
As colors dance in the sky
All other thoughts left behind
Waves of purple and pink
With splashes of deep red ink
Sprinkled with specks of silver and white
On a canvas of a dark winter's night

After our 3rd 16-hour shift we skipped down the gravel road in the 4 am dusk holding still numb hands
hysterically laughing about a snowman made of ****** fish ice and decorated with intestines
to our room of splintered walls and sand infused beds.

Drunk on sleep deprivation and the movement of the conveyor belts
Fiona demanded of the 4 am twilight that our work be easier tomorrow
I told her that tomorrow could always be the hardest
she told me that I’m Eeyore because my contemplation always looks a bit like pessimism.

A week later I stuck my finger in the pus filled lesion of a salmon
and worried that I wasn’t existing well enough
I asked Fiona if she thought we were more ourselves dressed in layers of sleep deprivation
She cut 3 tails and stated that we must experience more life when we’re awake for 18 hours a day.

This place had forced the clean carefully constructed versions of ourselves to collapse
but she didn’t want this coarse damp translation of humanity to be what we intrinsically are.

Water and pink slime slid down my rain gear as I processed her words and the fillets sliding by
60 salmon later she spoke again
“You said once that every person you meet has some sort of impact on your life.
Maybe you’re always you but never the you that you were before this moment
because who we are is infinitely changing
we won’t always be grime.”