UFO Investigator

UFO Investigator

From its dark winters, this is Alaska --
terrain unknown and treacherous, white
blinding with snow, and sky black and filled
with these contraptions --

or so they say.  These men and women who
burst at the seams with story.  Far below zero,
days at a time, I wait.  I watch.  The lights
reported here, could they

possibly be natures wrath?  That volcano
we all remember, or maybe Aurora sparkling
on the horizon.  But pilots, to and fro from Juneau
widen their eyes in fear

to tell me: this is where I saw it.  This is where
I knew -- I knew it was real.  In the lower 48
flying is different.  Intimately, as a pilot myself
I am so aware

of the way we hug the sky with our wings and
engines.  A slip proves fatal in these mountains.
Twelve a year die in avalanches here. Those lights,
that glitter, the unidentified --

we risk breath to learn, to certify
what only the Universe can fathom.