The tide will soon recede and I’ll muck along its last lines
poking for something interesting in the detritus.
If nothing else, kelp whips and gull skeletons splayed
and salt-purified.  The sun is predicted to come out today
to brighten the water’s multitude of small peaks.  When
I say small, I mean in comparison.  If what I wrote had no
meaning, no emotional heart, I wouldn’t write.  But that
doesn’t mean that “connection is everything”—a sad trope
if you think about it.  One thing after another, sequence,
also connects, but merely by succession.  Maybe that’s
enough.  Like the doe today on the hill opposite, ambling
out of view.  Next, one fawn, and then, signifying both
wonder and a bittersweet coda, a second.

Chris Dahl hopes to cup a handful of murky pond-water and reveal another world half-hidden in this one. Her manuscript, Not Now but Soon, just won Concrete Wolf’s 2024 Louis Award and is scheduled to be published in April, 2025. Mrs. Dahl in the Season of Cub Scouts, a chapbook, was published after winning Still Waters Press “Women’s Words” competition.