In spring, fireweed sprouts above Puget Sound,

rose-tipped cairns that lure a flock of seagulls

downward, winter-worn, to form a hill’s crown.

In the mouth of the bay, a tugboat’s hull

severs the slack water like black fabric,

the shape of the prop-wash an oil-green trail

that opens as a fan. The captain flicks

his cigarette butt against the ship’s wheel

and turns south to the beach, taking a fix

on the basalt cliffs at the shoreline’s rim,

the chalk-white shelves collapsed above the rocks.

He charts a constellation on his arm,

the face of a hill which blooms in a rash

the birds now spiraling upward like ash.