The blues all smush together into this hazy mist.

No distinction between land and sky.

Emerald water smushes seamlessly into swaths of cotton ball clouds.

The Korean family’s chatter from camp still echoes within.

Forest lava, I hear the little girl cry out to her childhood comrades.

From the camp nestled next to us under the redwoods,

Dreaming along the shoreline holding this churning belly of blue.

And oh, this blue.

Like a memory.

Whale skin glistening.

A Blue Jay’s feather flittering in the afternoon sun.

The soft, endless ocean in his eyes.

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*This poem is available in my book Soft With Me, printed and bound in Western North Carolina thanks to a grant from the N.C. Arts Council.