Honored to have Submerged Passage One selected for Nulla – Independent Arts Journal, Issue 7.

The work appears alongside Patricia Wallesverd’s poem Salt and Soil.

Grateful to be included among the artists and writers contributing to this issue.

Nulla – Independent Arts Journal

Summer 2026

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Salt and Soil

By Patricia Wallesverd

Your brother’s boat leaves port today. 

Sails flutter in the salty breeze. 

The bay is calm.

Gulls and small waterbirds 

dip and dive around the boat. 

You head north — four hours, five days, one year.

Wisconsin, a grey house near a cornfield — me. 

Traffic hums in the distance. Cicadas whine. 

Red-winged blackbirds nest 

in the cattail swamp across the road.

I sit on the front stoop, 

a pail of sweet peas between my feet. 

A spade and soiled gardening gloves rest at my side. 

Dandelions spread through bluegrass and fescue.

I think of water — 

a bucket from the spigot 

rinsing dirt from my hands, 

rain coming from the west, you rolling with waves 

on a vast ocean of salt.

I think of the house in the dunes 

behind live oak and cedar, 

bush lupine and cream cups. 

You at an easel — 

white and red pulled from a brush, 

barefoot at water’s edge, 

salt crusting your jeans.

I am shelling peas, 

digging dandelions in Wisconsin.

You have salt in your hair, on your lips. 

I have a kettle of water — 

salted, 

boiled dry. 

I think of the house in the dunes 

behind live oak and cedar, 

bush lupine and cream cups. 

You at an easel — 

white and red pulled from a brush, 

barefoot at water’s edge, 

salt crusting your jeans.

I am shelling peas, 

digging dandelions in Wisconsin.

You have salt in your hair, on your lips. 

I have a kettle of water — 

salted, boiled dry.