Excursion

for Kate

Not to worry. I am safely back
from the reefs and rockpools of the North
with scarcely a word out of place.

There -- as I recall it --
I was thrashing about in a lagoon
of post-industrial fireweed

when I came up, not with a sponge or fish,
but an ingot of warm clinker,
from which some local deity

had escaped in a great hurry.