Denise Dumar's two poems: "Seeing the Comet" and "My Father Walks to Siberia from Nome, Alaska"

                                                                           

 Denise Dumars’s poem, “Snails,” is currently nominated for the Rhysling Award for short science fiction, fantasy, and horror poetry. Her most recent collection of poems, Paranormal Romance: Poems Romancing the Paranormal, was nominated for the Elgin Award. She has three short stories coming out in anthologies in 2022, including the HWA anthology Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology. A retired literary agent and college English professor, she now writes full-time and helms Rev. Dee’s Apothecary: A New Orleans-Style Botanica, at www.DyanaAset.com.

Seeing the Comet

All of a kind, we joined the others,

crossing the bridge marked CLOSED.

Black shorts, dark hoodies:

we were of the faith. One supplicant

brought a dog for show, but

it wasn’t about the dog.

To the right of the sickle moon,

neon yellow-orange, above

the conifers, beside the electrical tower,

we saw it: the smudge, the blink-and-

you’ll-miss-it. Did I really see it?

My eyes watered

in the misty evening breeze;

the silence of this dark park—a blanket.

That bridge across that drainage ditch

was like a crossroads: no one goes

to parks at 10 o’clock at night.

But we did. We’d come out

for a pinpoint of light,

a smudge of paler-than-evening blue,

a dust bath for the clouds.

We saw it:

Neowise. “Not much compared

to Hale-Bopp,” you said

when we got back to the car.

“No, and we didn’t drink the Kool-aid.”

I looked down at my black Rykas.

Silence on the wide, dark street.

© 2022 Denise Dumars

Photo courtesy of NASA

My Father Walks to Siberia from Nome, Alaska

All those years ago my father heard

that his Native American ancestors

walked from Siberia to North America

across a land bridge the prevailing theory at the time

and the time for him at least was World War II

where he was sent to Nome, Alaska

and as Sarah Palin says, you can see Russia from there

He didn’t have much to do there in Alaska

he wanted to fly so he’d joined the Army Air Corps

but his eyes were too bad they decided

so no flying lessons for him

and they put him in armaments not much there either

but it was better than the infantry

which his uncle had served in back in World War I

The Russian pilots used Nome for R ‘n’R

made vodka from raisins and potatoes

and my dad really liked their soft leather boots

because if it’s anything those folks are known for

besides vodka it’s their groovy Cossack boots

but they couldn’t sell him a pair at any price

the only way to get new boots was to turn in old boots

And don’t forget that they were our allies at the time

though that would change by the time I came along

and he’d heard there’d been a plane crash

a bad one wreckage strewn here there everywhere

and picking through it he found one of those great boots

and he thought he’d hit the jackpot

but when he picked it up someone’s foot was still inside

It was so cold at Nome that the sea froze in the winter

probably doesn’t do that anymore with global warming

but back then it did and so he decided

why not try to walk to Siberia I mean really

why not? If they came here the other way surely he could

get back the same way and like so many other things

in life it seemed like a good idea at the time

He said he was about a mile and a half from town

out on the frozen sea so cold that breathing hurt

and you could get ice crystals in your lungs

and he learned that you crunch walking through an ice fog

suddenly he realized shit I’m standing on the ocean

and he turned around and carefully walked back

frozen more from fear than cold listening for any tiny crack

And I guess I should be grateful

because if he’d fallen in and drowned or froze or both

I wouldn’t be here writing this strange poem

in which reality is so much more ludicrous than fiction

and when I had my DNA done I found out

that I’m only 4% Native American

well First Nations really as it’s from Canada

So now I wonder what other stories

my father never told me as the time he told

the story of trying to walk from Nome, Alaska

to Siberia it was only a couple of years before his death

and he’d never told me that story before

although the other stories he told over and over

what can I tell you except he saved the best for last.

© 2022 Denise Dumars