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I’m experimenting with a poem that I didn’t like and sitting with it for a bit.

Kelp Nets

Sea otters dream in the dark tide,
Curl up in kelp streamers to hide,
Disguise their pups when tired
In between swimming lessons.

My mate studies the path of water,
It carves canyons and shapes streambeds.
I am resilient and cope with pressure
But susceptible—too easily contaminated.
He seeks to define the limits of my aquifer,
A leaky bucket of beach sand & sea glass,
Tumultuously tipped by man’s hand.

I am ninety percent like the otter
Made of fur and snout and salt water,
Swimming five months in the rivers;
Beneath my coat, I am a nymph
Mending the kelp nets torn from tillers.
Fins side out, I am a fish instead
Darting hyper-vigilant,
Then drifting half-dead
In the churn of sediments
the mouth delivers.

Granite bones
Inside this squishy island figure,
Curved by glaciers and hormones,
The Gulf Stream—tempt his geological
Urge to measure the reversible current
Push-pulling me along a coast
Without houses I dream.

LCS