☀ Today's Poem: "Outer Lands" Bill Carty

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October 6, 2021

Outer Lands

Bill Carty

I'll tell you the story. I was walking
the outer edge of the outer lands
where sporadic signs staked in dunes
warned to keep distant from the mammals;
in fact, there were critical acts in place
to enforce nonmolestation,
but between me and the sea a seal
appeared to be having a time of it,
rocked and moaned in a deepening birth,
as if trying to summon momentum
to roll down the beach toward water.
In short, it seemed stuck and—it's never far off
in the imagination—dying. I thought
I should bring sea to the seal. I filled
a detergent bottle at the surf and called
the seal "buddy." "You OK, buddy?"
as the tide went this way, then that,
with no sense of intention. An hour before,
I had encountered a friend on this beach,
both of us having walked through our pasts
to that moment. Now he was gone
and I was supposed to be in the mountains
but the mountains were on fire.
From the highway that morning
I watched smoke plumes rise
in each far valley and drove past my exit
straight for the coast, straight into
this story where I gathered
armloads of kelp, making a damp bed
for the seal. Increasingly, my efforts
bore the whiff of not science,
but ritual. I consulted the experts
I wasn't too embarrassed to ask.
On my phone I found a video
of a seal snared in Ocean Shores,
two cops hunched above it, jabbing
at tangled fishing lines with utility knives
as the seal lurched, as the cops jolted
from its teeth. A crowd in sweaters gathered
as the camera narrowed to tattooed flames
on a bicep clenched around the seal.
Beyond this, straggling clouds from Constable
on the horizon, bright light at their edges
reflected in mud. Then one officer
walked toward the SUV, retrieving a club, I feared,
though he returned with a stick and wire loop—
one for the dogs they don't shoot, presumably.
He fastened the catch at the seal's neck
and drove its head into sand until the body stilled,
suddenly submissive. What looked like choking
wasn't—this time—and the line was cut,
and the catch was loosed, and the seal's
arched back bounded for ocean. The algorithm
urged me further: a sea otter pup rescued
by blond hero in board shorts; a stranded whale
in Weymouth; a lone porpoise found
in a British farmer's field fifty miles from
the ocean. Here's the thing: I was looking
at the way things had happened in the world
for evidence of how the world would happen.
Which never works. Each day bears
some crucial variance. And I knew this,
practically had it written on a coffee mug,
but when I was there, and when there
was then, I had to say stop—and let red
fill the harbor, and let red wash the shore,
and vow never to touch another living thing
for fear of how my being human might kill it.

from the journal KENYON REVIEW

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Forward

"2021 National Book Award Finalists"
"Sweater, on. Tea, steeping. Blanket, splayed. As we enter the cozy vibes of autumn, all that's missing from this picture is a good book. If you need help picking one, the National Book Foundation just announced its finalists for this year's awards. The winners will be announced at a virtual ceremony on Nov. 17."
via NPR

READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES

What Sparks Poetry:
Amaud Jamaul Johnson on Joy Priest's Horsepower
"Her poetic line stretches out like a horizon barely visible over the steering wheel. Of course, if you've never burned a tank of gas, cross-hatching city streets on a late spring Sunday afternoon, braiding the voices of Al Green or Smokey Robinson through the ribbons of heat rising from the asphalt, this book is an invitation to joyride."

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