Moon on the pier
Some time in Winter.
A red dress against
Seattle rain, and all of
the ferry lights
barely discernable
in the fog.

Out there where the Pacific
begins, there is a Lakota
woman weeping.

Something to do with
her lost children whose
makeshift
graves

have been flooded.

She howls out loud on
mud-stained knees.

Emily Carr sits at her canvas like
an ethereal mist, painting the
wave-washed pines, the ghosts
of wailing.

From here I can feel it all,
as deep as tide pools. As
real as

the wind lifting the hem
of this damp red dress.