The Whites

Took a much needed break from work and headed with my friend Kyle and his dog Spruce to a couple of cabins in the White Mountains, about an hours drive north of Fairbanks. It was a wonderful time - good weather, fast trails, silence, northern lights, and friendship. It was also nice to get away from reading about discourse in indigenous politics and take a moment to contemplate the poetry of Rossetti.

Willowwood
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
Leaning across the water, I and he;
Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell:
Only our mirrored eyes met silently
In the low wave; and that sound came to be
The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
He swept the spring that watered my heart’s drouth.
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.