As poets and story tellers met, sea stars melted unexplainably
along the waterfront from Sitka, Alaska to San Diego.

As presenters spoke, polar bear cubs drowned from having to swim
too far to keep up with their mothers due to global warming.

As the Washington State Convention Center & Sheraton Hotel filled
each morning and emptied each night in a tide of aspiring writers,

Fukushima had its worst spill of radiation in six months,
and California experienced its worst drought since the 1500s.

Professors, directors, and students of the AWP tribe taught
and learned as those before had thousands of years

and hopefully would for thousands more
like a kid with a stick on the Olympic Peninsula,

a writer in his youth, running in circles and
delightedly carving tidal sand for onlookers to enjoy

before the next set of waves erased everything.