Olm
Proteus anguinus
I live in a cave. Of course I’m immature.
That’s how I can breathe underwater. I play the long game.
You may never meet me. I can never be sure.
I shine in the dark like a deep-sea fishing lure,
an ambush predator’s dream, an eternal flame
in a smoked-glass sleeve. Of course I’m immature.
I can wait longer than you. I could even defer
my next meal a decade, if drought or scarcity came.
They might never reach me. I can never be sure.
I’ll never give up my gills, nor my tail, nor the blur
I like to imagine I make when I strike. Don’t blame
me for wriggling. I know I’m immature.
My needs don’t change: snails; mayflies; the aquifer
that freshens my pool; a few friends; freedom from shame.
I’m learning Slovenian, but I can never be sure
if I’m getting it right. I believe the only cure
for sadness is hiding. I wish I could change my name.
I live in a cave. I know I’m immature.
You may never see me. I can never be sure.
Bowhead Whale
My babies have fallen asleep. Calving glaciers are moving them.
Rounded-off, melted, then frozen over again,
so that they look glazed in their transparency, too slow
to make any sound you could hear, their slick surface-
facing surfaces face up to the threatening troposphere,
a temporary delight to the tympanum, or to the paired-off nares,
or to the inner eye, always ready to turn some moment
into an echo, like something we might choose to keep.
My babies must be very cold by now.
They trill for one another, and coo and open
new space inside me to make room for my new sounds.
I think they are learning. I think they may never be warm.
The inwardness of the ocean below me keeps turning,
the way that we adults use our tails to slow down.
I have been teaching them, the winter-born, to surface
for the sake of respiration, and how we trap shoals
with our flukes and pressure drops to feed the old,
how to tell hunger from loneliness, how to know,
by long listening, what comes before a storm.