Tonight the spruce reach up and tear the clouds

until their fragments rise

as smoke from a doused fire

as a gray peace settles over those I love

and those I don’t.

In these minutes between rain

and wind

and the easy sunshine

someone should bundle up our troubles

and toss them onto the deck of an ocean going boat

like that gill netter moving up channel.

They could do it from the Douglas Island Bridge

before the wind reunites the broken clouds

and rain.