Poetry | Sound Asleep | Mary Ann Schaefer

Sound Asleep listen
In the dead of a restless
night, it might seem
she has really stopped

breathing this time . . .
then she breaches the surface
like a great blue, inhaling

moonlight to submerge
again with a lobtail slap.
That’s the signal to roll

over into the seesaw back-
wash and follow her descent,
diving the fathoms free

from a pelvis fused to
the spine, attuning . . . her
lyrical outcries coursing

farther faster; buoyant
vocabularies resounding
like a point-and-click

forecast that bounces
back, rattling the jaw.
Listen, are you

listening?  Not to makeshift
news: the cleaving Arctic ice,
erratic plankton bloom, nor

bleached coral boneyards —
what’s astonishing is
the thick, raw stew

of krill trekking top to
bottom every night, a
carbon-digesting convoy

that scatters sound like
love, insoluble love.
Ascending into quiet

dawn, a slow measured
lift through sonorous
caverns into effervescent

lightness, see how her
ribcage seemingly
unfolds . . . perhaps

still time, pressing
lips to mouth, rousing
her back to life.