Tidepools Magazine 62nd Issue Launch

My dear friend, Becky Evasick, was a wild and wonderful fiddle player. I played with her in The Beez, a group that morphed many times through the years in personnel. She was also a dedicated Wordle player. I wrote the poem that follows for her. This poem will appear in Tidepools, a lovely magazine out of Peninsula College in Port Angeles. They are celebrating the release of Tidepools 2026 at their annual Launch Party on Friday, June 5, 2026. Contributors will be recognized, and selected artists and writers will share their work.

Wordle on the Day After: for Becky

A secret word,
Mostly vowels, for play.
But you died yesterday.
Now the game’s all blurred,
gone wrong.
The clicks: bones
rattling. The guesses: stones
rolling down a flat screen without a song.
A song sans shape,
sans everything, but the game’s
restless rules still pertain
and yield your word—not agape
but apart. Your wave from the blue
to my starting with adieu, adieu, adieu.

Copyright © 2026 Jeanie Murphy