Mortal – a poem by Heather Swan

Mortal 


How impossible to forget
in that late equatorial light 
on one lonely edge of the Pacific, 
those thousands of crabs
no bigger than thumbnails
who scurried away from our feet
as we walked across the sand, 
each step setting off a ripple,
a tide of tiny creatures
so afraid of us, even though we
had no intention to harm, 
and how you sought 
the sense of humility
the ocean provides, sought 
to surrender your worn, 
human self, and so let 
the dark waves take and toss you
among the fists of gneiss 
as I stood frozen on the beach, 
the Magnificent Frigatebirds
ushering you home.

Heather Swan‘s poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain. She is the author of the poetry collection A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin Books), a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and the chapbook The Edge of Damage ( Parallel Press), which won the Wisconsin Chapbook Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and  The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She teaches environmental literature and writing in Madison at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.