David-Sleeth Keppler

WINTER ISSUE #15 FEATURED POET

David Sleeth-Keppler, PhD is a new poet who has found his voice in midlife, balancing a twenty-year career in psychology and marketing. He lives among coast redwoods, the fog and the sea in Arcata, California, with his wife and children, and serves as associate professor in Cal Poly Humboldt’s School of Business. He enjoys walks with his son at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary and with his wife in the redwood
community forest.

FIRST RAIN

The oak remembers everything­—
each ring a held breath,
a season survived.
This morning, bark dark
with yesterday’s rain,
moss brightening to electric green
along the north face.
A Steller’s jay tests one branch,
then another. The wood holds.
In the canopy, torn leaves
catch light like stained glass.
What the wind takes,
the earth receives.
New mushrooms push through
last autumn’s debris,
soft as forgiveness.

LOW TIDE

All day the egrets stand
in their own reflections,
patient as stones.
Mudflats shine like hammered tin.
A single crab sideways
through the eelgrass,
carrying its house of salt.
The ocean pulls back
to show us what it keeps—
broken shells, smooth glass,
the small bones of fish
arranged like letters
in a language we’ve forgotten
how to read.