Newport, Oregon Coast: 2050

One of Sol Magazine's topics this month is: write about life on earth after 2020. I've written prose about this topic before: thought I'd change the location and try it in verse.

There’s still a town, in spite of everything—
houseboats moored among the treetops,
floating shops tied up to Yaquina Bridge,
a fishing fleet in the estuary one hundred feet
above the old coastline. Still fur seals barking
and the smell of fish guts. Still fog drifting
every morning through tall cedars,
now standing dead with their feet in salt.
Every day the crabmen drop their pots
over the old boardwalk, where, they say,
the crabs hang out among the drowned
shops and galleries on Cannery Row.
We don’t get many tourists anymore,
but there’s still work, sunlight, rain, life.