Dawn Smith

Dawn Smith on “A Whale Alone”

There is no audio recording of “A Whale Alone.” I tried several times but could never get past the words “Alex was dead” without my voice breaking. It stunned me to realize that, so many years after the fact, I was still deeply affected by his death.

In writing the first draft, I relived the excitement of my first live cetacean stranding, the terror of knowing I was out of my depth, the frustration of not knowing how to care properly for these animals; and as time went on, the sorrow of knowing we could not save them. That first, much longer version, included more about the rescue at the beach, more about Nick, and more about me and my job.

Spending time with Alex after Nick died, I realized just how alone he was. True, Marine World staff swam with him most days, and when we fed him, we spent time in the water with him, but that was a few hours a day. He was a whale alone. I trimmed the essay. It became Alex’s story.

After Nick died, the crowd of biologists, doctors, and veterinarians ebbed, the core crew from the two facilities (TMMC and Marine World) left to make sure Alex got the best possible care we could offer. A couple of biologists stayed on. One studying cetacean communication wanted to learn what, if any, sounds Alex might make while on his own. The other was the person who, after many false starts, found a nipple that Alex would suckle on, a huge breakthrough. From there, we could bottle feed him, no longer needing to put a tube down his throat.

The night I wrote about in “A Whale Alone,” I was supposed to be in another part of Marine World to speak about the whales at an outdoor public event. Bad weather canceled the talk and one volunteer scheduled to be with Alex couldn’t make their shift, so I stepped in.

I didn’t know it would be the last time I would see him alive. I didn’t know he would stay with me for so long, as sometimes he would only suckle for a few minutes before going off on his own. One can speculate on what he was thinking, how he was feeling, but, like so many things about his time with us, we will never know. I only know how special it felt just to spend time with him, to know I was giving him at least a modicum of comfort.

Still, as I look back, I wonder if we did right by Alex. This is a dilemma that wildlife rehabilitators often face. We do the best we can, but lack of knowledge often hampers us, having to make things up as we go along. Once invested in an animal, it is hard to stop and review the situation, and easy to lose sight of the welfare of that individual, when we focus too hard on keeping him or her alive.  

This may be one reason I still struggle with Alex’s story. Perhaps one day I will be able to record his story without my voice breaking. Perhaps I never will. Some animals just don’t let you go, and you can never know ahead of time, or even during the time you are working with them, which ones will touch you most deeply.

Taylor Hamann Los

Taylor Hamann Los on “AlaskaN Oysters”

Over the past year or so, my writing has become rather seasonal: in winter I tend to write winter poems, in summer I write summer poems, and in spring and fall I write less but spend time reading and thinking about new poems. The first draft of “Alaskan Oysters” began in January 2021, when I wrote a slightly different version of the poem’s first line. I was thinking about—and wondering about—an oyster’s sharp shell and how that may be the only defense it has against human hands. There was snow outside my window, and I felt immersed in the poem’s world of cold, salt, and sea. 

Nature almost always informs my work in some way, but I had never written about oysters before. I did a lot of research on Alaskan oyster farming. One of the interesting things I learned is that oysters grow well in Alaska’s waters but cannot reproduce due to the cold and must be imported as juveniles. For me, one of the most engaging parts of the writing process is research. I want to make sure what I present in my work is accurate, and I always learn something new along the way. I also often discover details that can enrich a poem in unexpected ways. Finding surprise within my own work is both exciting and rewarding.

However, during the editing process, this particular poem stalled. I just couldn’t seem to get the ending right. Something about it wasn’t playing nicely with the rest of the poem. At the same time, I was also considering writing another poem, one based on a dream I had. My husband and I do not have children yet, but in this dream, we had a daughter, a daughter whose face only I couldn’t see. It was unsettling, and I woke wondering why I, the person who would have given birth to this daughter, could not see her. “Alaskan Oysters” did not come together until I realized that the oysters and dream daughter belonged in the same poem. She was like these oysters: they were all beings whose lives were completely determined by someone else. It just took me a while to see it.

Currently, I do almost all my first drafting in one large document, combined with freewriting and my own commentary. When the document reaches around a hundred pages, I start a new one. Once a poem’s first draft reaches completion, I copy it and give it its own space. These drafting documents are basically long poetry diaries, where I can see how my poems—and my thoughts toward them—develop over time. It also means my drafts and other snippets of thought are in close proximity. Had these two poem fragments not been in the same space, I may not have brought them together. Maybe I would still have arrived there eventually, maybe not. That moment of finally figuring out exactly what a struggling poem needs is exciting.

While digging back into this poem about ten months after I wrote its first line, I find myself surprised by it yet again. Even though I know how it took shape, I still wonder exactly where it came from and why. As I move through the seasons again, I know poetry will continue to surprise me, and for that I am grateful. Poetry, too, is a wild thing—one that can push or pull just like the tide.

Romana Iorga

AMBITION by Romana Iorga

Many years ago, I was told by a number of people—thankfully, a very small number—that I lacked ambition. I was young at the time, barely out of my teens, and these were people Who Knew Things, so I believed them. They wanted to encourage me to become more assertive, to put my skills to good use, to make money or a name for myself, or hopefully both, rather than drift from one frivolous pursuit to another. They meant well, I thought at the time, and something was clearly wrong with me not to crave anything that normal people crave. 

Like, what’s even the purpose of being alive, normal people said in my childhood, if you don’t have a big soviet-style apartment and a Zhiguli and a job where you make lots or rubles for your family? My parents, a poet and an actor, who decided to marry their misfortunes, didn’t have any of those things. Their most precious commodity was books. As a result of their sheer incompetence at life, all I wanted was books as well. And, secretly, friends, but friends were in short supply so books had to do. Friends tended to flock with other friends of the same feather. I followed them surreptitiously, under the pretext of pushing my younger sisters in the stroller, hiding behind this or that tree. This is how I discovered trees.

Ambition. A particular goal or aim, something that a person hopes to do or achieve, a desire to be successful, powerful, or famous. It’s a word that has haunted me all my life, pointing its crooked finger at my shortcomings. During my rare periods of rebellion, lacking ambition became synonymous with doing my own thing, being a nonconformist, I mean, screw society and its unrealistic, capitalistic demands on my time. Then hunger would knock at the door and suddenly society’s demands became quite reasonable and my time well spent in currying favors from this person Who Knew Things or another.

I was learning to mistrust. It’s mind-boggling how long it took me to figure this out. That of all the people I’ve met and the books I’ve read and the trees I’ve touched simply because I couldn’t help myself, I trust trees the most. Particularly when they are together in something called a forest, which is an amazing concept that humans have yet to master. Cleaning the air instead of polluting it? Regulating temperature? Dispersing noise? Reducing soil erosion and increasing soil fertility? Controlling flooding and the expansion of deserts? Providing a habitat for other forms of life? Helping us breathe? 

It’s a no-brainer that a forest is the superior societal system. People tend to disappoint sooner or later but a forest never does. We brag and hide our shame and brag some more. We have this irrational need to prove to ourselves and others that we’re smarter, more handsome, more rich. Look at our weapons! Look at the size of our nuclear arsenals! Look at how many people just like us we can kill and get away with it. 

A tree will sacrifice itself for the good of others. 

I believe it’s within our powers to be a forest but we’ve forgotten how. We could live authentic lives and tell the truth of our existence the way a forest tells its truth and does not expect accolades for it. We are capable of so many new things, things that were not even possible a hundred years ago, but we seem to have lost the sense of who we are in the process. We could stop hurting one another. We could share our resources. We could help each other breathe. 

It turns out that I do have ambition, though it may be the wrong kind. People Who Know Things would never take it at face value, but we’ve grown estranged and their opinion doesn’t matter so much these days. 

I want to inhabit, no matter how briefly, the shape of things I encounter, the pelt of beings I come in contact with. I want to give them a voice—not out of some super-inflated sense of self, but simply because we coexist in the same fragment of space, in the same interval of time. Because there’s room for all of us here if we admit that we know nothing but are willing to learn from the trees. 

When I grow out of this body I want to be a forest.

Natasha Pepperl

Natasha Pepperl on “If You Live Long Enough”

As we all know, the pandemic has shed a new emphasis on grief as it becomes a more prominent part of our shared experience and vernacular.

These past few years have also brought non-COVID related suffering into my life as I’ve lost family members and also become a foster mom and seen the heavy griefs kids in foster care carry. I’ve turned to poetry as a way to find beauty in some truly terrible circumstances.

Brenna Twohy’s “I Guess I’ll Tell It Like This” was the inspiration behind my poem “If You Live Long Enough.” In her poem, Brenna likens women who have experienced trauma to sand dollars and carries the metaphor throughout the entire poem in a way that is lovely without discounting the realities of abuse.

In my own grief journey, I have found the most solace in people who are able to sit with me in the tragedy without flinching or trying to make sense where there is none — and who can hold space for some light and levity at the same time. This is no easy task, but nature shows us plenty of examples.

Last summer I hiked through Rocky Mountain National Park and saw the devastation of Colorado’s East Troublesome Wildfire, the most rapid-fire expansion in state history. I was in awe at the breath and depth of such destruction to a once lively forest. It was eerie enough that it seemed a fitting metaphor for the aftermath of a huge grief, where a once familiar landscape suddenly looks otherworldly.

I sought to make the poem forceful and punchy like a wildfire whipping through mountain pine. For levity, I also looked to these burned trees with roots “Sky-side / for the first time and nothing left / to do but laugh through another morning.” Just as with the unpredictability of grief and wildfires, many lines in this poem change meaning upon reading the following line.

And grief permeates everywhere and everyone, from a hiker squinting to see the miles-long destruction in the mountains to a city park with an unhoused man raw in his sorrow, to two friends in a garden who grab greedily at the beauty around them.

But in the connectivity of grief, we also see its isolating factor: how no grief can be fully shared with another, even among close friends or a married couple experiencing the same losses.

I find the most satisfying part of writing poetry is when a poem teaches me something new. In this poem, I learned that I am stronger than I once was. That I can grasp joy more fully now than ever before. That everyday I’m learning to more completely let go of what has already been taken.

And can’t we all say similar things about having survived thus far?