By Anthony Emerson
It was after midnight
and we drove the Golden Road
into the blackness.
I parked beneath the outstretched arms of an Eastern Pine
And
We stood on a bridge that swayed with the weight of us
Katahdin was a faint purple shadow in
the dark expanse that we could only see
because we knew it was there. The Penobscot moved invisibly
beneath our feet and my knees wobbled
while I stared at the stars and waited for my eyes to adjust.
I couldn’t see you in the night, but I felt your presence and our whispers cut through the humid air
like dim streams of light. The sky was like any other Northern sky
until it exploded in bursts of green rivers
spilling across the stars.
We searched the celestial wilderness
for silent flashes of cosmic light—
two specks of flesh
suspended above running water, aching in the way you ache when something is too
big to comprehend.
My ears pulsed
with the sound
of your heartbeats
and the entire universe
felt like a darkened room
that could barely fit us.
I clenched the railing
and tried to forget
that we are floating through space
And I thought about the moths
with wings like brilliant flowers
resting in the eaves
hoping for a new moon.
Anthony Emerson lives and writes at the edge of the North Maine Woods. His essays, short fiction, and poetry have been published in Appalachia Journal, Bangor Daily News, The Dewdrop,The Dillydoun Review, Northern New England Review, Tiny Seed Journal, Flora Fiction and Visitant. Outside of writing he enjoys hiking, the Grateful Dead, and kayaking with his grandmother. You can find out more about him here: https://anthonyemersonnaturewriter.squarespace.com/