Here, you came on foot once, when you were a girl, weighted, breathing arid winds for days. Trudging through wild grasses and sage, whiptails scurrying about your ankles. You shivered in the cool night air until the glimmering and gleaming of water catching sun returned light to your lungs. Your hummingbird winged heart, and still such silence. Stepping upon the salt-lined shore, how the breeze tickled your face and hair. You scattered your father’s ashes, dissipated his words. Some say you bathed in your father’s ashes. Some say you breathed in his very words.

Here, no dragonflies accompany you, only the lean sound of you breaking the water’s surface. This one song which only your body could compose.

JUNEAU

JUNEAU

A wolf spirit has just passed; he roams beneath the dense cover of cedar and pine, onto the pebbled inlet shores. The wolf spirit calls, and fog lifts in the white of dawn. Baby orcas surface in sudden gusts of air, barely breaking the water’s skin. The wolf spirit passes, a curl of fragrant smoke.

ESTUARY 2

ESTUARY 2

She was born with fins and fishtail,
A quick blade slicing water.

She was her father’s mermaid child,
A river demon, elders said.

She mimicked her cetaceous brothers,
Abalone diving bluest depths.

She polished smooth her brothers’ masks,
Inlaid nacre half-moon eyes.

She lit oak pyres and bade the wind
A whispered requiem.

She knew the songs of tidal surge,
Of death-still moonless nights.

She veiled herself in cornflower
To soothe the ocean’s rage.

She learned the language of the loom,
Mirrored grandmother’s oak tree hands.

She spooled elk sinew pulled from bone,
Fleeting bodies, a meditation.

She carved spear tip and dagger hilt
In winter’s shadowy corners.

She sharpened blades, and fled downriver
As elders clucked their tongues.

She emerged in spring, this tribe of one,
Hybrid coyote and cool green sea.

THE TRUE COLOR OF THE SEA

1.

sages’ gardens, ginger root, and siren
glow of mist, green tongues of light
smoke and portents arousing hungers
magnolia-plumed gold moonstone heart
collecting rain in turtleshell hollows
of shoals and shelter, of stones that sing
of coral, of wine, of luminous unnamed

2.

cinnamon groves, veil of monsoon
moonless midnight’s milky stars
the finest gold dust, tinder, mirror
of angels’ tears, of devils’ blood
of cooing doves, a child’s fine bones
of sugarcane, and fistfuls of salt
of silk brocade, of laughter, of waiting

THE FIRE, AROUND WHICH WE ALL GATHER

1.