Summer in the Alaskan interior
Is like a long, lazy afternoon
Where the sun lingers in the sky
With the fervor of eternity
Long life and the everlasting
Internal energy recycled and rejuvenated
Flowing like waves in an ever increasing tide
All throughout the immortal daylight
Put to rest only by the once a week all day rains
Where time washes away
No wristwatch
Before cell phones
No clock upon the wall
The endless summer of life at 21
Spent amongst the far northern boreal
Forest and creek side and swampland
Beaming and brimming with energy
Aspen make themselves known first
Appearing on the edges and borders
Leaves dancing in the summer breeze
Illuminating muted sunlight
From within each flickering pale green flame
Two horses picketed along the edge
I'd walk by a dozen times or more
One all white as the aspen
The other white with the golden hair of sunshine
How friendly and content they seemed
Grazing grasses and herbs
On the edge of the forest
As the aspen enjoyed the wind's eases
In the muted light of the understory
Labrador tea mixed fragrance with rose hips
Proudly they cantilevered above
Thick carpets of sphagnum so soft to the step
Occasionally a moose would run through
Crashing down trees in its escape
Seeming to run in fear
Of my footfalls along the path
Deeper in spindly black spruce
Mixed in with contrast
Sometimes forming darkening thickets
Where mosquitoes buzzed ferociously
There they would hide from the wind
And shunning the never ending light
They would gang up for a drink
Constant as the sun in the sky
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