Richard Widerkehr
Coming to the Pacific at Night
At nineteen I thought these waves
moved with a kind of readiness—
white water sliding
as in a dream, a frothy end
to adolescence maybe.
This coastline's darker now.
The waves come in from farther away.
They aren't white as forever;
they don't sound like thunder.
Pelicans glide in the troughs.
Bio
Richard Widerkehr earned his M.A. from Columbia University and won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan. He has two book-length collections of poems: The Way Home (Plain View Press) and Her Story of Fire (Egress Studio Press), along with two chapbooks. Tarragon Books published his novel, Sedimental Journey, about a geologist in love with a fictional character. Recent work has appeared in Rattle, Floating Bridge Review, Gravel, Sweet Tree Review, Cirque, Crack The Spine, Jewish Literary Journal, Penumbra, Sediments, and Salt River Review. Other poems are forthcoming in Measure, Naugatuck River Review, and Mud Season Review. He's worked as a writing teacher and, later, as a case manager with the mentally ill. He co-edits poetry for Shark Reef Review. His new book, In The Presence Of Absence, will come out from MoonPath Press in Fall 2017.