(In honor of Sea Otter Awareness Week
and the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters)

•••

She log rolls on her side and rises,
breathes and pats her stomach,
rolls and pats, then, chin tucked
to her fuzzy chest, curls into
a forward roll, somehow undulating
into a twist, which to my untrained eye
would be a 10 in the gymnastics
world—a perfect otter doughnut.

I couldn’t do that.
Could you do that?
No, you could not.

But Ruby can, and Rosa and Ivy
and Kit and Selka, the aquarium’s
all-girl otter band, can, and, oh, look—
is that Ivy?—here she comes with
her elegant backstroke, a blue bowl
balanced on her chest as if she’s
ready for dinner to be served, please.

And when she rolls, she transfers
the bowl so smoothly to her paws,
momentarily disappears underwater,
her powerful tail twisting her lithe
form, propulsion and steering
all in one appendage.

How many hours on those dark
days of lockdown did I spend glued
to the otter cam? Looking up otter
facts as I watched the girls zip
in and out of the frame like
sleek brown rafts:

Otters have the world’s densest fur—
more than a million hairs per square inch.
Their whiskers are called vibrissae;
their valve-like ears and nostrils
seal up as soon as they hit water.

I’d watch and chuckle, get all punny
with exhaustion from hours of online
teaching/coaxing/counseling/
too much worry/too little sleep—

I otter stop watching now, get back
to grading. Gotta call the significant
otter. Look at those gyrating girls—
they’re just otterable. Aren’t they
otter this world?

Some folks seek celebrity sightings
of the two-legged variety. But even
as these new versions of us have
resumed our otterly rearranged
lives, I still like to sneak a peek,
catch up with sea otter girls—

the water ballerinas who made us
smile, who helped us through those
endless days and even longer nights.

•••

You can see the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters here.