Waking in Deep Night to the Great Bear

That summer in Alaska you shape-shifted 
into Midnight Sun Woman, inhabiting 
your name like a constellation while 
endless blaze made you feel as though 
you had flown through your skin, 
a flamboyance of star birds singing 
the stories of you into myth. Enthralling 
the tundra. Entrancing the mountains. 
Flamelike the fjords bordered by glaciers. 
That summer Midnight Sun Woman 
speaking soft as candlelight to full moons 
awaiting winter in a black wolf’s eyes, 
to bears and many ravens also black, 
to bull moose grazing by a valley lake 
in the Brooks Range. That summer 
the heart you had lost returned the way 
fireweed burst forth where wildfires left 
gray ghost spruces and charred forest floor. 
Summer ended, plague raged, in October 
you flew home to Catskills in a world 
still going mad. Back in your own bed 
you tumbled to sleep in darkness, 
around midnight waking to what seemed 
like fireflies at the sliding door. Squinting 
confused eyes, you realized it was 
the Great Bear, keeper of dreams 
and memory, so near the glass the stars 
of his medicine body lit your shadow face 
as if it were summer again, as if to say 
“You, my mate, Midnight Sun Woman.”