The Pacific receives
the river. Here
the plume slips
into bluer water.
It splinters
the sand. A feather floats,
a child’s spoon
washes in.
Upstream where sagebrush
edges riverbanks
cradling Hanford’s gray halls,
birds forage
through grass
broken as straw.

Nancy Dickeman‘s poems and essays are forthcoming or have appeared in Post Road 32, Poetry Northwest, The Seattle Review, River City, The Seattle PI, Common Dreams, OCEAN Magazine, and other publications. She is a recipient of a Commendation Award from the National Poetry Competition, and received her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington where she won an Academy of American Poets Award. Her poetry manuscript is titled Stunned with Sugar and Fire. She is co-founder and literary curator for a multidisciplinary exhibit addressing the atomic era, Particles on the Wall, http://www.particlesonthewall.org. Her first novel manuscript, a nuclear age story, is titled The Wind-Scattered World.

Twitter: @NancyDickeman