Each place continues to yield its own quiddities, its own miraculous movements, and its own tragedies.
–C.D. Wright
What a strange place to wake
up in — some beachy thing
str e tched taut across the earth
thin as balloon – skin. Sniff sniff :
Salt. Dimethyl sulfide. You know,
that ocean smell. Invisible krill –
clouds wafting around ( really
invisible? ( may as well be ) ). A whale
dips through the sky — slow breach
below the surface layer dark
milk – cloud cover for air.
Me too, big guy, I’m here
breathing like you : we’re
taking our time, been here before,
holding it in,
swallowing tiny things that give
themselves away so easily ;
myopic ‘til it matters
what’s just out of reach —.
Whale – friend rises out of sight,
back to the pod, perhaps, or that
lonely blue above the neutral
gray – blanket – ceiling ;
some seagulls eye my fries,
rats with wings my dad
used to say, my brother
always the one to toss them
a few, as if that makes
a difference ; the swarm comes
regardless who beckons.
The gulls dance and sing
like they just learned to fly.
What is that certain shine,
the sheen of feathers in wind : I
Remember now I wasn’t taught to walk,
not really, nor to sleep, I just
sort of found them there
waiting for their host to arrive.
Licking the ketchup off a finger I wonder
about all the ways to be lost.
The gulls give up on me.
I miss my whale – friend.
Things were simpler with you
dipping up and down, giant
ovioid eye eye-ing my life :
I’d never felt so beheld.
Mom’s shadow back there
on the boardwalk : growing taller
all the time ;
she cools my forehead even
turned around.
I sense the sand creeping over
my towel now, stretching
for my wallet my phone my
keys— how will you leave
this place without them
the octopus asks, camouflaged
to the nines like a shovel
and pail, you cannot exist
without things ! things ! things !
kept close to your body
you must live like
the cephalopod, we’ve got it
all figured out, I can squeeze
through just about anything
see and octopus buttons itself up and slips
through a crack in a sandcastle—
I don’t know how
to respond to a cephalopod
so I bury myself up
to my neck and wait
for the tide to come in
and it does ( flash flood )
so now I’m under the sea :
I see every friend I’ve ever
lost touch with waving slowly—
I start to wave back, but then
whale – friend pokes its head
beneath the water and smiles
that big beautiful cetacean – smile,
sings, hey man
we’re all here
we’re all buried
we’re all working on it
well—
wow
look at the size of that krill – cloud
see you later!
—tide goes out—
there are too many things
too many things
to think about I hear an albatross say
as it carves through the air
back to its nest on an impossible cliff.
The sun hasn’t budged an inch.
On the warm sand my body
nestles under soft, fine time,
sure heat tip – toes into my eyes
and knowingly nudges me again into absence.
Jake is a book buyer and seller at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, where he has worked for 2.5 years. He is the founder of big hug publishing and of the poetry journal Windowcat.