Yesterday evening, the tide high,
a couple, or three, gray whales
spouted and rolled near shore.
One at a time a great fin
rose, dripping sea, toward sky
from a wide thorax on its side.
Now, afternoon, on that broad
muddy stretch where sea’s ebbed
lie the gouges the submerged
fins scooped to loose the ghost
shrimp—oval ponds, far
up and down beach as we can see,
each silver mirror of cloud cover
like another unblinking earth’s
eye the night’s tide’ll close over.
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Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids, The Marriage of Space and Time, and four chapbooks. Recognitions include The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Prize and The Tishman Review’s Millay Prize. Poems appear in Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Terrain,org, Solstice, and elsewhere.
Photo by Guille Possi.
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