Meditation with Salal and Otters

Today Baker’s drifted even higher into the sky, the dark gap
grown a distance impossible to measure but clear enough

from far away. Closer, my measure-rock is underwater entirely
and the drift-log nods easily in a gap that was dry an hour ago.

Sharon’s attacked the salal, cleared the old log so we can sit
with our wine and discuss the great themes, happy and

half-drunk. The sky, the bay, the islands are a study
in shades of blue, pearly iridescence gathering over

it all as the last light hesitates in the trees. Suddenly cooler,
a gaggle of geese on the water, kelp, a clutch of river otters

bobbing and weaving. Twelve miles across to the mainland,
the mountains vague as promises, so much water between

and every day the ferries and freighters churn across it,
any number of beings dip and drink and dazzle themselves,

creatures grand and gentle, armored and furred, scaled
and skinned, empty and open. The drift log slides east,

veering off from shore through no will of its own.
How many otters can live in all this water? At least four,

say my distant friends, and that’s all that worries them.
The school of silvery fish think four otters is plenty.

But now four more slip down the shoreline, dark heads
only above the shimmery surface, heading east as the sun

sinks behind. And the mist is an aching golden pinkish
purple, an otherworldly wrap, a loose scrim to keep secret

what must be secret until the evening can be laid away.