P.O. Box Chicken Ak Poem by Michael Pruchnicki

That summer we spent on the Fortymile
at Anchorage Mike's cabin outside Chicken
yielded riches beyond belief, I tell you.

No, it wasn't the chickenfeed we scratched
for in the coldest river this side of the Yukon.
Some of those minute specks of yellow metal
still reside in the coffee can stowed in a cabinet
downstairs. Too much trouble to extract it
from the black sand and dirt it's buried in.

Mainly, it was the characters I met at the old
post office in Chicken whose tales I mined
for color and rich detail. Anchorage Mike
comes to mind right off the bat. Tall and
downright skinny he was, but a bear for work,
dredging ten hours in the frosty Fortymile
for a pocketful of nuggets from a claim
north of ours. An old hand (23 he was)
who had worked the pipeline near
the Arctic circle as a crackerjack welder,
best one north of Fairbanks he claimed.
He flew a single-engine Cessna out of
Talkeetna up to the glaciers on Denali,
transporting tourists from the Lower 48.
Never heard him cuss, except when
absolutely necessary!

I work that coffee can of character
from time to time, drawing on the men
and the few women who live in the Great
Land of Alaska!