Contests

Fences were meant to climb over and woods dense with underbrush and muck our domain. We hacked through prickly bushes, trampled long grass, collected burrs on our clothes and in our hair, clear cut canopies to lay bare the soft earth, and sat for hours stripping bark to carve the skin that lay beneath. When

Snow on Western Hemlock Forest A corps de ballet, wearing Yesterday’s snowfall, branches Sway, curving down, Fingers dripping icy water Under bright mid-day sun, Heads tilted on drooping Necks; they dance more Slowly in dawn mist and With abandon in moonlight.   Penny Hetherington: One late April day driving past a Western Hemlock grove on

Out West   It was your silence that turned me Out and away from the hollowness Resounding through this empty place We sometimes felt was home. Along the beach road, walking away, I know one bird on the wire Is less alone than two Perched yards apart. A silent sea stack divides the Pacific On

Leaving Bones Upon the Sand   He could not stay away from the beacon house. The turret of light pulled him, flopping up the beach, gills drowning in the air. There was no desire but the primitive need to satisfy curiosity about the creature that looked out to sea, then back to land, with a

Codicil for Grief That he no longer sleeps past four in the morning. That she drank a six-pack of Miller’s before lying down with the handgun. That he found his brother in the backseat of a Ford. That his brother never woke up. That his brother’s notebooks were filled with tiny words. That his brother

Call It Water, Call It Rain Reading Joy Harjo in Astoria, I watch words drop through fog onto the ground. At the coffee shop on 15th and Duane, the windows steam water drip drips rils down the pane Outside the drizzle drifts on wind evergreens shift         a gauze fringe between stoic

Dear Any Soldier   I want you to know That the sun still rises and falls In its usual arc Here as there Wind blows through many-colored grass And chases dust Trees Blossom I want you to know That I pass no judgment Small matters of birth and timing Separate us I do not know