Collaboration: Rhen Benson

I am honored that longtime Port Townsend Arts Advocate, Bob Francis, shared my poem "At the Shore of Apparitions" as Poem-of-the-Month, February 2023.

I wrote this poem as a response to Rhen Benson’s beautiful photograph “Veil”:

At the Shore of Apparitions

A skiff. Adrift. Alone.

A morning of mist and hunger at the edge of this rain-dark sea—

another realm before you,

its uncertain shore.

If you swim or skim onto the rock-strewn beach, breathe deep.

Creator Raven shaped this island green: spongy ground, rockweed

algae, tidal sedge, ferns. Here, Sitka deer swim towards trees

ten times one hundred years wise. Red-cedar, Western hemlock,

and yew—all lichen-clad.

Black wolves fish streams pulsing with egg-heavy salmon, and buff-coated

bears incise bark with their teeth to caution others. Listen

to loons wailing across the hours; the curious pine martens charting

fallen trees. You are not alone.

You might have drowned but didn’t. This world calls to you in a way

your life before never did. Find a spring’s water. Drink.