Today’s Office

Today my office is a rocky beach just below UBC. Today my desk chair is a water worn log. My walls are the eroding cliffs and the distant mountains. My floor is made up of a thousand cobbles that squabble with the rising tide. My workmates are a pair of harbour seals trawling the shoreline; smelt fishermen scattering their nets in the distance; an ancient arthropod flicking its antennae at me; a lone cormorant b-lining west just above the surface of the water; an eagle who is heard but not seen; and oil tankers and tankers and tankers and the haze of Alberta’s wildfire smoke.