J.P. White
The Elk on the Beach in Oregon
Everywhere the animals are getting reacquainted.
Loggerhead turtles are laying more eggs in Juno, Florida.
Pandas are getting frisky at the Hong Kong zoo.
Silverbacks are pounding their chests in St. Paul, Minnesota.
For one suspended moment,
The earth has been returned to the animals.
If we understand suffering to be the quiet, backroom sibling
To our sudden loss of control,
Then nothing still to come
Could have prepared us for this weeping and this Eden.
As now, over coffee,
When a sheave of late morning sun hoists the fog,
A herd of elk not seen for fifty years,
Returns from the shadow coastal mountains to walk the beach,
Take the air, look out again across the Pacific.
—Submitted on 06/19/2020
J.P. White is the author of the poetry collection All Good Water (Holy Cow! Press, 2010) and the novel Every Boat Turns South (Permanent Press, 2009), as well as several other books. His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies.
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