Winner of Poetry Open to the Public category in Creative Writing Contest
You may leave but it will never leave you,
some body of water. Where the winds are
a second skin that smell of smoky campfires
and salted fish, clean and inviting. Where fish
are practical, whales are cousins, and boats are
objects of beauty to be admired like architecture.
If the winds had colors, they'd be fat ribbons that
let loose or tie depending on the mood of the water,
which is so deep it is as blurred as the sky. The
mountains envelop this water, and cradle any sun
that pigments their curvy sides, old mothers. This
is where your children sing and run naked in their boots,
their eyes shining and cheeks lacing pink. You run too,
the fish run, fireweed pink as roe bloom, bloom as you.
Mistee St. Clair is a Juneau-based writer.