A Small Poem from Larrabee State Park

Hello! I hope the beginning of autumn finds you happy and well.

My niece and nephew from California are visiting for a few days, and we’re taking them to enjoy some of our favorite places around Bellingham with the intention of convincing them to leave the sunny southland when they graduate high school and move here to go to college. (Our nephew is a senior, and our niece, a sophomore.) Nephew is planning to major in either pre-veterinary studies or creative writing. Or marine biology. Something like that. Tomorrow, we’ll take them to Pike Place Market and then Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. How will they be able to resist moving here once we subject them to samples of raspberry-rhubarb jam and to the unparalleled experience of hand-feeding fresh herring to the Emperor penguins?

Today, we took them to Larrabee State Park, the oldest park in the state of Washington, just south of Bellingham. While Mark and the kids climbed around on the sandstone rocks and cliffs along the water, I took pictures and drafted a little poem on the back of a grocery list. Here’s a shot from the beach at Wildcat Cove:

Larrabee State Park, looking toward the San Juan Islands

And here’s the little poem I drafted on the back of the grocery list:

_____

At Larrabee State Park, Looking Southwest

today the bay throws
its own reflection
toward the sky

like a pebble cast from the beach
from a boy’s
small hand

at the blue-gray, yellow-edged
watercolor wash
painted onto the distance

and floated back to the beach
on small
chromatic ripples

_____

Cheers to you,
Jennifer