Slowly rising
up and up
as if the waves
had formed a fist
beneath me,
and all I could see
was flesh
gray as the hair on my head
but mottled with barnacles.
Smooth like
a glass-walled elevator
fish had decayed in
overnight—the creature’s
breath that bad,
its rise that easy.
It must have turned,
aligned itself
to lift me
on my board
facing the direction
the whole gray world
was heading.
The air had never
seemed so clear.
Sheen of light
off slate and pearl.
Nothing you can do
when something that immense
decides to take you
or to let you go.
A few huge breaths
before it sank, set me
softly on the sea.
Below my legs
expanse of whale
submerging. Last,
the vortex of its tail.
It could have killed
or maimed me
but it let me live.
Sometimes I think
I was a giant’s plaything,
sometimes that it felt
my ocean-loving
thoughts, offered a gift
I couldn’t ask for or refuse.
Sometimes I rise up
from deep sleep,
glimpse the massive flukes
before it dives,
leaves me whirling.
is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022). Her poems have been published in Gleam, One, Natural Bridge, Permafrost, Pearl, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, Gyroscope, and other literary journals. She lives in Southern California.
