Outer Lands

I'll tell you the story. I was walking
the outer edge of the outer lands

where sporadic signs staked in dunes
warned to keep distant from the mammals;

in fact, there were critical acts in place
to enforce nonmolestation,

but between me and the sea a seal
appeared to be having a time of it,

rocked and moaned in a deepening birth,
as if trying to summon momentum

to roll down the beach toward water.
In short, it seemed stuck and- it's never far off

in the imagination—dying. I thought
I should bring sea to the seal. I filled

a detergent bottle at the surf and called
the seal "buddy" "You OK, buddy?"

as the tide went this way, then that,
with no sense of intention. An hour before,

I had encountered a friend on this beach,
both of us having walked through our pasts

to that moment. Now he was gone
and I was supposed to be in the mountains

but the mountains were on fire.
From the highway that morning

watched smoke plumes rise
in each far valley and drove past my exit

straight for the coast, straight into
this story where I gathered

armloads of kelp. making a damp bed
for the seal. Increasingly, my efforts

bore the whiff of not science,
but ritual. I consulted the experts

I wasn't too embarrassed to ask.
On my phone I found a video

of a seal snared in Ocean Shores,
two cops hunched above it, jabbing

at tangled fishing lines with utility knives
as the seal lurched, as the cops jolted

from its teeth. A crowd in sweaters gathered
as the camera narrowed to tattooed flames

on a bicep clenched around the seal
Beyond this, straggling clouds from Constable

on the horizon, bright light at their edges
reflected in mud. Then one officer

walked toward the SUV, retrieving a club, I feared,
though he returned with a stick and wire loop-

one for the dogs they don't shoot, presumably.
He fastened the catch at the seals neck

and drove its head into sand until the body stilled,
suddenly submissive. What looked like choking

wasn't-this time-and the line was cut,
and the catch was loosed, and the seal's

arched back bounded for ocean. The algorithm
urged me further: a sea otter pup rescued

by blond hero in board shorts; a stranded whale
in Weymouth; a lone porpoise found

in a British farmers field fifty miles from
the ocean. Here's the thing: I was looking

at the way things had happened in the world
for evidence of how the world would happen.

Which never works. Each day bears
some crucial variance. And I knew this,

practically had it written on a coffee mug,
but when I was there, and when there

was then, I had to say stop--and let red
fill the harbor, and let red wash the shore,

and vow never to touch another living thing
for fear of how my being human might kill it.