Two Otters in Autumn Off the Oregon Coast Highway

Are they creatures of river or of sea?
Even the otters don’t know—or no,
don’t make the distinction.Gray water
meets tide meets foam meets fog
meets sand meets furmeets whisker.
They cavort down eddy and cutbank
separate and together
in the way dancers hold a spacebetween them.
I am no liminal animal.I made ready
all my life for suffering.
Paw in trap, blood on fur, white snarl
in the dark.I made ready
all my life to lose what I love best
in this world. This small crooked house
swept to sea.This sea.
See how I armor
sometimes with pelt, sometimes with shell.
But the otters!
They gambol in the swell, tumbled
and roughhoused by battering waveafter wave …
rash and wild surfers spindrifters
comb and whitecap and curl
until they tire and return to the river
return salt to freshwater,home.
I forgot,
I forgot to make ready for joy.
It cracks me openlike abalone
like that one star through a cloud.