My short story Racing Rules took second prize in the Owl Canyon Press competition.

Hiking in a second-growth forest in British Columbia today, I ran across an abandoned piece of equipment called a Mechanical Donkey. This device, about the size of a compact car, was used to winch fallen trees up or down the very steep slopes upon which they had grown. Now rusted, with a frayed cable wrapped around the spool, this device was critical to the livelihoods of the first European settlers in my remote location.

A few hundred yards below me, there remains a small settlement of First...

Beneath the dock the seaweeds sway

In marching lines four times each day

Dark purple, green, and red display

Like banners on parade.

First north to south the water flows

Delights your dangling dock-based toes

From marsh to ocean, out it goes.

Slack tide: the pennants fade.

Now urchins, sea stars, otters meet

Among the silky leaves to eat

Delicious eel grass tasty treat

Before the currents turn.

And as the tide from far-off sea

returns, know that my love will be

as big and deep and wide and free

for you,...