Lynne Wycherley
Otter-watching
Something agile is swimming
through my dreams. Streamlined, secretive.
New life in my veins. I wake
as if pushing up through water
and then I remember her, the otter,
wife of rivers and moonlight
waterfalls combing off her back.
How she’d glide, twist, fringed
with glass beads. Slide from the bank,
toss pebbles. When her story thinned
to hearsay, I searched rivers’ manuscripts
looking for her illuminated letter,
a red pulse pushing through the depths,
not knowing that otterhounds tore her,
long-tongued shadows scouring the land,
or that chemicals stole through the water,
nitrates, phenyls, atrazine,
their sly veins seeping under its skin.
Her blood trails down a rockslide of years.
I see her scurry like a refugee.
a brown overcoat hanging from her bones.
It’s said we’re cleaning up, rinsing our hands,
it’s said she’s inching painfully inland
like oxygen to a starving heart
holt by holt from southwest
and sealoch. They’ve seen the spraints,
webbed tracks. Spoor on a map.
I pause on my heels by the water’s edge
where reflections blink and are still.
I wait for her body to break
into the light. Sleek. Sienna. Whole.
through my dreams. Streamlined, secretive.
New life in my veins. I wake
as if pushing up through water
and then I remember her, the otter,
wife of rivers and moonlight
waterfalls combing off her back.
How she’d glide, twist, fringed
with glass beads. Slide from the bank,
toss pebbles. When her story thinned
to hearsay, I searched rivers’ manuscripts
looking for her illuminated letter,
a red pulse pushing through the depths,
not knowing that otterhounds tore her,
long-tongued shadows scouring the land,
or that chemicals stole through the water,
nitrates, phenyls, atrazine,
their sly veins seeping under its skin.
Her blood trails down a rockslide of years.
I see her scurry like a refugee.
a brown overcoat hanging from her bones.
It’s said we’re cleaning up, rinsing our hands,
it’s said she’s inching painfully inland
like oxygen to a starving heart
holt by holt from southwest
and sealoch. They’ve seen the spraints,
webbed tracks. Spoor on a map.
I pause on my heels by the water’s edge
where reflections blink and are still.
I wait for her body to break
into the light. Sleek. Sienna. Whole.
Lynne Wycherley has worked in nature conservation.
Her first full-length collection is published by Shoestring
Press next year.
Her first full-length collection is published by Shoestring
Press next year.
Page(s) 20
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The