Ship Canal

The seagulls were sitting on the silver-roofed boathouse,
and the torn cotton clouds over Capitol Hill were lost brush strokes.

What does it mean when seagulls are sitting six and three,
and the water is deep blue? All of the meanings lost:

a bridge that goes up and makes you stop,
a worn photograph, sixty years old,

the things we've still got,
the precious things we sold for nothing.

Jeff Buckelew is a self-exiled Oklahoman who lives in Seattle and teaches Latin in the middle school at Seattle Academy.