Short Pier Walk & More

By Diane Webster (May 2026)

Short Pier Walk
–
At the edge of your long walk
on a short pier you hesitate;
your reflection wobbles below you
as if you have already stepped
from the final plank
and plunged. Your boots
fill with cinder block weights
laced around your ankles
as water explores every crevice
from pockets to fabric.
–
Except you hold your breath.
You don’t know why.
You want to drown,
but your body is reluctant.
Your open jacket floats
under your armpits
as if to sprout wings
to push you to the surface,
and you wonder how long
you can hold your breath
because the urge to breathe
struggles to open your mouth.
–
You close your eyes hoping
you can pretend to sleep
then drift away like a leaf
descended from its mother tree,
but your body rejects your thoughts.
Your arms flap, your legs kick,
but you have gained too many pounds.
You let slip a gasp, you cough a bubble,
and you inhale water
which your lungs try to spit out.
Your arms and legs flail
as if you’re in a ladder race
with air as the prize.
—
Too late. You sink.
Tiny bubbles escape
like your soul ascending
in effervescent trails
until they break the surface
and merge with the greater air
above the water. Your reflection
waits.
–
–
–
Summer Relatives
–
Uncle Chick and Aunt Pet
lived in that house
with a dog named Dog
and a cat named Cat.
Aunt Pet had a green thumb
so green I swear she could plant
a dead tree branch straight up
in the ground, water it
and have roots wiggle
through the dirt as tiny
leaves unfurled from its
resurrected limb to
in a few years shade
the house Uncle Chick
and Aunt Pet lived in.
–
Summers I’d ride my bike
over and listen to stories
and old-timey talk
of when Aunt Pet
was growing up,
but it took me a long time
to know that Aunt Pet
was Grandpa’s sister.
Imagine! Grandpa having a sister!
–
I’d tiptoe through Aunt Pet’s
cucumber patch and spread
the scratchy leaves in search
of the pre-pickles hiding
like Easter eggs beneath
the foliage and plopping
them into my bucket.
I smelled the vinegar
wafting out of the open door
as I dumped my discoveries
into the sink where
they would end up in jars
and lined up on shelves
like when Mom and Dad
stopped at a roadside museum
with dead snakes and rats
and hairless creatures floating
in gallon jars like pickles
in Aunt Pet’s house.
–
–
–
Whopper of the Lake
–
The tree fell into the lake,
and no one heard.
A limb dips into the water
like a Victorian lady’s finger
dragging from the boat
her gentleman friend rows.
–
Its wake cuts a miniature
beside the boat’s passage
as oar puddles dip
circular paths across.
The grandpa whopper
that cruises the depths
and reigns the fish stories
for decades on the banks
spies the wiggling digit
that lures its curiosity upward.
–
The lady does not hear.
The gentleman does not see.
The legend grabs the hand
and dives as a screaming splash
swallows itself in the lake.
The gentleman leaps in
for the rescue for which the lady
will be forever indebted
with a marriage by the lake.
–
But the legend grows
in old-fisherman lore
as the lady and gentleman
are dragged to the bottom
to keep the whopper’s company,
and the boat drifts ashore empty.
–
So now when a tree falls into the lake
and no one hears it splash,
the old timers drag out the story
of the couple pulled from the boat.
If you stare really hard
You might see their faces ripple
below the surface as if
you could offer your hand
and pull them to safety
except for the dark shape
swirling beneath them.
–
–
–
Road Scars
–
I am the parallel dirt paths
switching back and forth
across the mountain’s back
like long-ago scars flogged
into rock, grass and wildflowers
interrupted by my trek
clawing on the edge of avalanche.
–
Stubborn weeds divide my steps
like a stalker mimicking my trail
threatening to overtake, to obliterate,
to rehabilitate the carved wounds
winding up onto the peak,
descending into the shaded valley.
–
I am the snow run-off trickling
down the path of least resistance
to flow into ever-increasing bodies
of water eroding rocks, uprooting
pine trees, pushing sand
into alluvial fans vomiting
across the road now closed.
–
I am the road unable to turn around,
destined to ascend the slopes,
fated to test my skills
while backing up or backing down
to where I was born from one
curious mind wondering
what was on the other side.
Now stuck
in the middle of the road.
–
–
–
Deflated
–
I am like the balloon
Santas and snowmen
at Christmas that lie
like decomposing corpses
on the neighbor’s lawn,
a crime scene sprawled
across unmarked graves of snow.
–
My hand flutters
in white flag response
but touches my lifeline valve.
I flip the cap and cover my lips
around the frosty gap and breathe.
–
Breathe in, breathe out
breathe in, breathe out
breathe in, breathe out
like my therapist taught me
to reduce my anxiety.
Third time’s the charm,
but I barely make a rise
in my deflated demise.
–
I imagine my foot practices
CPR through the tire pump
under my sole because it’s hard
to breathe into myself
when I’m taking breath from myself
in a perpetual cycle
of breathe in, breathe out
as one vessel fills the other
until both hear a wisp of a hiss
of air escaping when it’s only
a matter of time before
resuscitation passes between
one to the other wondering
how long this can last.
–
–

Table of Contents

Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. Her haiku/senryu have appeared in failed haiku, Kokako, and Enchanted Garden Haiku. Micro-chaps were published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Diane has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com.

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