Winter Poem

I am
Where the dark and the light meet
Where color is born
The prism
The point through which
white bends then divides,
spreading through the blanket of night

— Ellen A. Wilkin

Weird

Weird

How weird is it to be
awakened
in the middle of the
night
By an alien
craft
that descends
in the shape of a
white ceramic-coated
box
it’s lights glowing
through a
fog
at the top
and its engines
bubbling and cooing
like the trunk of Parnell’s
1964 Chevrolet Malibu
(will I be just a
scorch mark by
morning)?

So weird that it took
until the bright
light
of morning for me to
understand:
this was no shiny
extra terrestrial space ship
but the refrigerator
in the cottage
in which I’m staying
whose lights were
the diffusion of
LEDs
from the Wi-Fi router
sitting on top—
Due to the canny placement
of a paper towel roll
between me and
those bright pinpoints—
and whose circuits told it
that moisture was collecting—
Time to defrost!
Bubble! Coo!

And how weird is it that
Digital wireless technology—
science fiction only a few
decades ago—
and the invention of the defrost
cycle—
almost a hundred years back now—
led to a 1950s sci-fi dream
of faster-than-light ships
crossing the universe
just to see me?

—Ellen A. Wilkin

Great Horned Owl

Having fun with my colored pencils. There is nothing like sketching every line of a bird, especially one as ornate as a Great Horned Owl, to teach you what that bird looks like! Thank you to Sibley’s Guide to North America Birds for giving me such a detailed painting to work from.

Reaching for the Horizon

You can never reach the horizon
You can never reach anything

Even the hand you hold
you are not holding
you are not even touching it
The feel of flesh on flesh
is merely the feel of repulsion--
negative against negative
electrons in the atoms at the surface of your skin
and the electrons on the surface of your lover’s hand
jump back from each other
It’s not that you don’t belong together
Its just that this is as together as you can get
Blame it on your skin’s electrons
They are just a little excited—
just negatively charged enough—
to repel other electrons in other atoms just enough
to create a pressure sense in us
to give us feedback that we feel as soft or rough or cold or hot
based on the relative excitement
of our electrons and the electrons
of those things we touch
When you pick up your cat for a hug
or a plate to clear it from the table
or the trash can to take it out to the curb
or any “thing” for any reason
you are creating a little force field between
you and that thing
But that field is not strong enough to blow
you and your cat apart or
send your plate through the window
or throw your trash can onto your neighbor’s
car as it goes by
It’s just enough so you’d notice.
Nothing ever touches in this world
not in the way we think
But no worries.
Physics has always worked this way
And if we hadn’t asked a bunch of questions
And done a few experiments
We would never know the difference.
Our brains just deal with it
So keep reaching for every horizon
just know you will never actually get there
And that is exactly how it’s meant to be.
It’s always been the journey that is important not the destination

—Ellen A. Wilkin