Poetry: “Listening for Otters” by Jayne Marek
Jayne Marek’s “Listening for Otters,” has a restrained quality, a sense that we as readers don’t have all the information. But it’s precisely this kind of withholding that draws us into the poem. The writing is tightly controlled and sparse, but the emotional content is simmering hot under the surface, the implications weighty and significant. Marek doesn’t give us everything. There’s an understated quality to the writing. But it’s between the implications that we see the real brilliance of the writing, the sharp turns and deep consequences, as Marek holds a mirror up to our own lives, our own dreams, our own darkness, and our own hope.
Listening for Otters
and listen at the edge
of the ravine, she whispers,
for the baby otters playing. The water
unseen below us makes its own talk.
The darkness is a jacket
we hunch into, the day’s fears
invisible now: the ambulance at her door.
Worry lifts leaf by leaf as we stand
in the chill. Tonight
will bring a full moon, but not yet,
and the clouds may thicken. Night calls of birds.
Things move on whether we’re here or not.
Owl claws that scratched my roof yesterday
will not return. I don’t know how
I know not to expect much,
just a rustle in salal bushes downslope.
He’s all right now, she says on half a breath.
Nothing came of it. She can’t see me nod,
our heads bowed.
We share the quiet,
attend to its depths, the cool
shuddering touch
of night insects, beginning their work,
Jayne Marek
Jayne Marek’s seventh poetry collection will be Dusk-Voiced (2024), with an eighth poetry book (Torrential) due in 2025 from Cornerstone Press. Her writings and photos appear in Rattle Poets Respond, Terrain, Catamaran, The New York Times, Spillway, Bloodroot, Calyx, Salamander, Gulf Stream, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Northwest Review, and elsewhere. Her photos have been used as cover art for Typehouse, Chestnut Review, Silk Road, Bombay Gin, Amsterdam Quarterly’s 2018 Yearbook, and The Bend, as well as for four full-length poetry books. Winner of the Bill Holm Witness poetry award (twice) and the Last Stanza Poetry Journal Editor’s Choice Award, she has also been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes, received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities for literary scholarship, and held creative residencies at Playa, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and the Whiteley Center. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
