Poetry Pick

AT THE END OF THE PIER by Joanna M. Weston British Columbia, Canada

we go each summer to the pier and choose a boat, perhaps a two-masted schooner in which to sail past Cape Horn or a ketch laden with Cox's orange pippens to cruise down the Coast through the Straits of Magellan where we would pour champagne libations for the seals and guillemots one year we chose a 40-foot yacht with cinnamon and salt for cargo and dreamed we cast off for the Orient lost our bearings in Vancouver and spent the summer tied to a rose bush at the end of a snake-charmer's garden last year we took pumpkins and nutmeg to the Arctic where we sold cameras to penguins and left pictures of ourselves naked and smiling on gleaming white beaches

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