Free verse poetry

A Bistro Near a Gazebo on Seattle’s Waterfront

Sheltering those who love and lose

A Seattle street leading to the waterfront. Photo taken by author.

Somewhere
along Seattle’s rain-slicked waterfront,

thus far
untouched
by unchecked urban advance,

there’s a road,
sloping, declining,
literally, emblematically,

partly cobblestone,
partly paved in asphalt,
as if partly hazed-over,

leading down
to where eroded land edges
are often delicately,
occasionally violently kissed
by lazy lunar tides

lapping
unhurriedly
from Puget Sound’s heft,
breadth of her ample bounty,

leaning in
where our moon had been,
nature’s peculiar affections

all observable
from gazebo-protected park bench,

well-placed
for voyeurs to spy earthlore in their

measured,
deliberate
estuarial courtship,

and if unsated eyes lingered longer,
following ferries out to sea

towards evergreen landings
shrouded in morning mist,

one might dare
to peek beyond even this opaqueness,
even when so often shrouded within
layers of overcast,

penetrating still, all the way out
to the Great Beyond
to perhaps catch a glimmer

of exactly where
it all went wrong.

Surely it’s possible,
though I wouldn’t know for sure,
having never ventured out so far
as to sit at that gazebo.