by Anne Marie Macari

We’re small now, small
as fish in our tiny school,

kayaking toward booming
spouts, flukes

and shadow-backs
breaking the glassy sea—

All around we see, hear,
whale, and drift, reckless

to encounter them rising,
ethereal tons

unstitching
the surface—the sea

a nether-world I dream into
but can’t know, where

a fin rises
like a black door

then disappears—

I’ve come here to be lost
in the blue center, rocking

on the brink of wet
darkness, the sea

swelling with beings, two
miles out, waves

picking up

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Anne Marie Macari is the author of five books of poems, including Heaven Beneath (Persea, 2020), as well as Red Deer (Persea, 2015). In 2000, Macari won the APR/Honickman first book prize for Ivory Cradle, chosen by Robert Creeley. Her poems and essays have been widely published in magazines such as The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, and The Massachusetts Review.