Walking back along the ledges
from a fruitless fishing expedition
fruitless but for the pleasure
of sunshine on tons of lazy swelling
clear Atlantic water
shifting glassy at my feet
– I encountered an otter.
Seeing me first it fled
across my path and
slipped into the sea
I searched the swells for it
and when our eyes met – it dived again.
We played this game several times
until I turned the tables
– dropping to my knees I crawled
crouched low over the serpent stone
snake fashion for ten yards until
carefully lifting my head
I saw the otter now searching for me!
We could have played all day
but the knobbly fossils of solitary corral
were hard on my knees
and so we parted with
a final interspecies gamers salute!
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics, invites us to write a poem about an intimate moment. This encounter with the “other”, a sea-otter, on the West coast of Ireland where I lived for ten years, took place on ledges of “serpent stone” fossil solitary corals, solitary corals that with horizontally across the plane of the rocks…
Andrew, what a precious encounter. Contact with “other” makes magic reality. You know what you feel. You know they know it.
Serpent stone sounds very interesting. I did not know coral grew in cold places.
It was, and still is, precious Li. As for the fossils, they are 350 million years old, when the continents were in different places with different climates – Ireland was in the mouth of a delta of a river much like the Amazon today… Great Prompt Li!
I love your interchange with the otter, Andrew! What a great connection for this moment in time!
Not even on any bucket list Dwight but a moment that will never be forgotten…
A wonderful intimate moment with an otter, Andrew. We’ve encountered a few on the Norfolk Broads. I love the way you set the scene in the opening stanza with the ‘lazy swelling clear Atlantic water shifting glassy at my feet’, and captured the otter’s playfulness. It reminded me of the books Ring of Bright Water and Tarka the Otter, which enchanted me as a child.
“I saw the otter now searching for me!
We could have played all day”
This is just splendid, Frewin
Muvh♡love
Thanks Gillena, I am not a big animal person, beyond a few cats that were foistred on us, there have been few pets, but this encounter with a wild animal was special…
Ah yes, we read those too, Kim. I was always mesmerised at the rise and fall of literally tons of water sliding past my feet…
Ha! I LOVED the ending.
Glad you enjoyed it Jay…
What a wonderful story/poem!!!! A special moment you’ve let us all share in. No doubt we all wish we had you as a friend. Delightful.
You are too kind Judy…
Otters are so playful, and such an encounter would have made my day (or rather days)…. such a pity the sharp stones had to cut the game short.
It can still make my day to think of it over twenty years later Bjorn…
I can imagine you making that crawl, Andrew ~ and the mutual salute! This is otterly charming!!
Thank you Helen, and an otter pun too 💜
oh, this one was so much fun! thank you!
Thanks Ren, glad you enjoyed i..
This reads so well, like a classic tale — that first stanza was a lesson on drawing your reader to you, and delaying all to the last sentence…poetry, well-crafted such as this…and in fact quite crafty with such clever, unseen storytelling techniques…is a pleasure to read.
Thanks Ain, high praise indeed…
What fun. Put a smile on my face. Fruitless but for pleasure.
Glad to be of service Colleen 😁