Diane Blue Shirt Tyon

Stearns Pier

At the end of Stearns Pier

pylons creak and rafters

groan like the back seat

of a rusted out junker back home.

Gulls watch where she walks

with her face glowing

jack-o-lantern on fire

with burning teeth curling inward

and her crotch scabby as if

with splinters and kerosene.

At the end of Stearns Pier

pylons creak and rafters

groan. Gulls wait,

watching where she walks

while the sun thorns

the back of her neck,

her throat gagging for a drink,

her muscles twitchy for a hit,

every nerve firing, desperate

for the stick.

At the end of Stearns Pier

pylons creak and rafters

groan. Gulls wait and worry,

minding her steps.

She could disappear

into the bilge, and no one

would know. Her mother

won’t care, but the gulls

would miss the crusts

she always gives them.

The tramping poems of Diane Blue Shirt Tyon (Diane Solis) have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in a book by Judy Reeves about the craft of writing in community, and published in literary journals and magazines, including, About Place Journal, America Magazine, and Ardor Literary Journal. Diane fell in love the with trains and the trails when she was seven, on her first train trip from L.A. to New Mexico. In 2005 her life partner died. Since then she’s been following in her father’s footsteps, traveling to remote places to photograph and write about the landscapes and wild creatures (including the two-leggeds) she encounters there. Diane Blue Shirt Tyon is her tramping name.