King Tide By Haley Bossé

Image by Michael Peter Ancher - www.kulturarv.dk, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29868326

King Tide

For Terry

Each year, a memory

Of tourists makes their way

Below the thermocline.

Each year, an unfinished

Triptych: the rising waves

Slap petulant at dunes,

The sunset bloody

Glacial backwash,

The empty mirror

Sharpened silver in between.

Only photographs can capture

What you’ve lost,

Dune-drunk perspiration,

The closing throat of azure tunnels,

Countless dogs let off leash

Disappearing in the haze.

Here, you sunbleach

With your name,

Copper clinking sail-like,

Tethered seaside

To your backbone,

Only now forgotten

Like my name, like the footpath

Between banks of blackberry,

How you learned to drive,

To stand on something solid

As we turned above the cliffs.

Terry, so much thrashing water

Tongues us out to sea.

About The Author

Haley Bossé (they/them) is a queer, non-binary poet, visual artist, and educator from the Pacific Northwest. Their poems have found homes in the Nimrod International Journal, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Strange Horizons, Gypsophila, and elsewhere. Haley's first chapbook is forthcoming from Game Over Books. Find Haley at https://haleybosse.journoportfolio.com or on Bluesky at @TalkingHyphae.