Tired and sad, we walked to the edge.
A freezing drizzle fell on cliff grass,

onto my hood-visor; grim winter-
speech from gray waves tossing nets

of torn kelp onto the rocks below. Our
feet and hands, so cold, distant from

each other, from ourselves. Pale green
foam flew from a deep crevice, hung

above the ocean’s sweep. A few cor-
morant heads appeared, disappeared,

played inside an illusion-inducing sea-
mist. Time to go. It’s always time to

go. And then we saw the roll of one
back, close enough to trace the gray

pattern of flank barnacles, catch a fluke
lifting seaweed from water, water from

water, before the slip beneath. Another
surfaced, another; seven in all, each

marked by a heart-shaped plume of sea-
spray, shot from a cleared blowhole.

Fierce breath that had journeyed from
this rain-chilled world into that strange

other: oxygen mingled with tube worm
coils, bead-focus of crustacean eyes,

tangle of mud-threads (spindrift of whale
motion, turning on the bottom); trans-

formed into carbon dioxide – pilgrims
of salt and blood – changed in minutes

from youth to late middle age, stunned
and amazed: Where have I been? Is that

what the black wing-span of a cormor-
ant really looks like? How do those rain-

drops hang mid-air in front of my face?
A mother and calf surfaced, exhaled to-

gether, took in a new breath, curved back
down again; and we sank with them, hair

spread by cross-currents just below the
surface, suspended in the softly churning

sac of this world, cold feet held firm to
soft, wet grass.

Christien Gholson is the author of several books of poetry, including Absence: Presence (Shanti Arts) and All the Beautiful Dead (Bitter Oleander); along with a novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind (Parthian Books). Several of his chapbooks can be found online, including Tidal Flats (Mudlark). He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, with work appearing in Ecotone, Permafrost, Flyway, Banyan Review, The Shore, Hotel Amerika, Tiger Moth Review, and The Sun, among other journals. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, is a somatic-oriented mental health therapist at a clinic collective. https://christiengholson.blogspot.com/