Kelp Beds at Shark Reef

Each wave lifts and seems

to disappear, as if the pungent tangles

occlude even the moon's stone-white pull. 

The hollow heads of great kelp whips lap, golden-green

on each slumberous swell. The surface is a membrane.

Below is a froth of filamentous algae, of gelatinous leaves,

translucent as peeled skin, embedded  

with bubbles of air. A nursery, 

where speck-size mollusks upwell

like detritus, the white bellies

of small fish dart and fatten, 

the Dungeness incessantly clean. 

A seal head appears ten yards out. Spiny

whiskers, round eyes, nubs of ears. It glides

toward the kelp bed. We make no sound, 

but it turns to look at us. The eyes are utterly

black, shimmering like jellyfish. Staring into mine.

It languidly sinks and is gone. 

Then another, then three more, floating 

to the kelp as in a trance.

What I have lost  

hovers close in the salted air, 

coalesces just below the surface

and I can touch it as I descend

where the body dissolves at last

into its weightless elements, 

where grief sinks deeper than light.

---

Eileen Walsh Duncan

Eileen Walsh Duncan’s work recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Swannanoa Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, CIRQUE, the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment, and the city of Shoreline’s Voices in the Forest installation. She received Seattle Review’s Bentley Award, and has been a Pushcart Prize nominee.