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Emily Ransdell
MANZANITA BEACH IN JANUARY
Today the tideline is a minefield
of rot, a rank brine of storm scum and debris.
Between the darkened houses
of summer, I see six Roosevelt Elk
easing their massive flanks to the ground.
They’re like old men settling
onto barstools at the Sand Dune,
little puffs of relief steaming
from their muzzles like sighs.
I think of boys I knew in high school,
how they roamed in packs, brazen
and bulked in their lettermen jackets
embroidered with the year, 1973.
One day late after practice, they ranked
us girls in order, posted the scores
on our lockers in permanent ink.
Those boys would be pushing sixty now.
I wonder if even one understood
what they’d done.
Today the sky is gunmetal,
warning of another storm. The salt
wind stings but the bull elk don’t twitch
or blink. They hold their ground as if
they know their kingdom is a given,
wherever they go.
About the writer:
Emily Ransdell’s first collection, One Finch Singing, was the winner of the Lewis Award from Concrete Wolf Press and was published in 2023. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Rattle, New Letters, Terrain, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. Emily lives in the Pacific Northwest, dividing her time between Camas, Washington, and Manzanita, Oregon, where she teaches poetry writing at the Hoffman Center for the Arts.
Image: Manzanita Beach. AI assisted digital image. Proprietary image. 2024.
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