Looking at Nome

Definitions of place come slowly and just when you begin to name thinking you understand, new doubts rise. Geography is a complicated matter. This is what Nome looked like for three days in late July to an outsider.

Just outside the town of Nome on the road to Teller, windmills. 

This photograph was taken just minutes before the previous one. Fog rolls in and dissipates, sometimes quickly, most often not. 

Homes and business are quite close to the Bering Sea. This is Front Street and a storm was happening.

Most mornings we saw folks walking the beach. The last morning it was in the high 30s at the start of day. 

A small group work during the day to remove the display of flags along Front Street. 

About 40 miles south of Nome is the Eastern edge of the Bering Land Bridge.

The Bering Sea is changeable within minutes. This is about 40 miles south of Nome where the sea and bay meet. 

Closer to the town of Nome. The sand from the beach washes across the dirt road.

Work is largely a matter of local pursuits. 

In this photograph, you can see the dirt road leading up the hill. Travel must be an amazing challenge in fall until there is snow. 

This dirt road leads to to Teller, Alaska. One of three dirt roads that lead out of Nome. The day we tried it we got about 20 miles and had to turn back as the rain had made such a mess of the road. 

This is an outhouse, and Heidi and I each used. No one was home there or anywhere along the long stretch of road. Locals told us the weather was more like early fall than summer. I was lucky to find earmuffs in the local food store the first day there. I wore them constantly. 

This stretch of marsh is along the road the runs south from Nome for about 70 miles. These arctic blooms  can be found growing wild. 

All along the road that runs south from Nome along the coast, summer shacks can be found.

On the road leading out of Nome. This is still close to Nome though. You can tell by the poles carry electricity. 

On the road to Teller.

Muddy road.

About 30 miles south of Nome, there is a bar. Heidi and I stopped in one afternoon and met the two people running the bar. 

Within Nome. 

Morningside Heights, July

Spirits in the Night, II (M.A. Reilly. Morningside Heights, NYC. 2009)

Morningside Heights, July

BY WILLIAM MATTHEWS

Haze. Three student violists boarding   

a bus. A clatter of jackhammers.

Granular light. A film of sweat for primer   

and the heat for a coat of paint.

A man and a woman on a bench:   

she tells him he must be psychic,

for how else could he sense, even before she knew,   

that she’d need to call it off? A bicyclist   

fumes by with a coach’s whistle clamped   

hard between his teeth, shrilling like a teakettle   

on the boil. I never meant, she says.   

But I thought, he replies. Two cabs almost   

collide; someone yells fuck in Farsi.   

I’m sorry, she says. The comforts   

of loneliness fall in like a bad platoon.   

The sky blurs—there’s a storm coming   

up or down. A lank cat slinks liquidly   

around a corner. How familiar

it feels to feel strange, hollower

than a bassoon. A rill of chill air

in the leaves. A car alarm. Hail.

William Matthews, “Morningside Heights, July” from After All: Last Poems. Copyright © 1998 by William Matthews. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company