Laura Page
Sea Kittens
Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist — Wordsworth
Kittens were washing up on the beach.
I had been thinking in this dream
of something I’d read somewhere about waves,
how many in the sky peel, how few see the shore,
and Wordsworth’s singing ones,
drawing their hips up, begging with the vast depths, speaking
to a lighthouse, or kissing any woman’s bare feet.
I was kneeling when they came, the kittens,
as small and blind as newly born, tabbied with kelp.
I don’t know if I was praying.
I only knew the sea had answered with unseeing, half-
drowned mammals, impossible to rescue.
Laura Page is a poet and artist from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Crab Creek Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, The Indianapolis Review, TINGE, and others. Her chapbook, “epithalamium,” was the winner of Sundress Publications’ 2017 chapbook competition. Laura is the editor of the poetry journal, Virga.
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