Who Walked Here

This workshop has been excellent for generating new ideas.  During the first week, we took an afternoon to do something called a "Walk and Write" at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum of the North.  During a Walk and Write, the idea is just to look around and, whenever you feel inspired, write about what you see or how you feel or how something makes you feel, etc.

This poem was inspired by an exhibit in the old part of the museum that outlines the six geographical areas of Alaska.  The exhibit has a small brown bear and a bald eagle on it and, in front where the placard explaining the exhibit is, there is a plaster mold (dyed to look like hardened mud) of several different footprints from Alaskan animals.  The footprints part is called "Who Walked Here" and it is explaining which footprint belongs to which animal.

I sat in the floor, in front of that exhibit, running my hands over the contours and roughness of the footprints, feeling the valleys where thick pads dug into soft soil and the sharp peaks that formed between toes.

This poem is the result of that time.

Who Walked Here

 

Footprints

A memory made in malleable clay
Set hard by sun and heat

A moment

Bright and fleeting
Caught forever like a fly in amber

The shapes

Sharp peaks and soft valleys
Mimic the landscape.

Their tale

A well worn path freed of brush
That shows their struggle.

Footprints

A snapshot depicting the life
The journey of a land long ago.