Poems by Stewart Florsheim

Message: Sitka Sound

by Stewart Florsheim

From Canary Summer 2022

Stewart lives in the Sausal Creek-Frontal San Francisco Bay Estuaries watershed, which includes eight waterbodies. The area used to be inhabited by the Ohlone people -- a Native American tribe formerly known as the Costanoans.

When I first spot them
I’m not sure what they are:
large torches, perhaps,
flames tapering into a soft glow.
And then, as if someone shouted,
they soar from the branches,
scores of eagles scouring the Sound.
An otter, attentive, flips over on its back
to protect its morning catch.

The water is balance as it holds
the early light framed by the shore—
red-throated loons walking beside
herons and egrets, flowers with names like
pearly everlasting, river beauty, harebell.
A dolphin pops up its nose near our kayak
and does it again and again,
right to left and left to right, tapping out
an urgency from another world.