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the pursuit of possibility

julianna mccarthy

Why, that day skirting the Susitna,
sled-borne under a glacier blue sky,
did we play it safe?

When that huge white wolf dog sprang suddenly
from nowhere to the top of the berm,
what if the musher had not shouted to the team,
Run by, run by?

What if we had slowed
and the team, unbidden, had pulled us
up and over the berm into that forest of frost stunted spruce,
more barricade than woodland, to follow that wondrous dog?

Would the team have broken loose, run free?
Together or apart?
Would I have thrown aside the blanket,
struggled out to chase them,
yearning to follow to whatever
den, cave, hollow lay in that black woods?

What if,
when the musher called, Run by, Run by,
the giant dog had come down to run beside us?
Does danger—discovery—lead us or join us?

The white dogs we evade,
the white whales we pursue.
White.
That beautiful blankness,
First footsteps in the snow, first path across the ice,
first words on the paper—