—For Carrie Saxifrage
Unlike me, my friend likes to count.
Once, she circled the little island
in flippers and wetsuit, counting 1,476
purple starfish plastered alive
to rocks. This was an act of hope.
It was a few years after chronic wasting disease
when so many starfish melted into nets
of fragile bone. My friend is firmly counting
her carbon, took the Greyhound
from Canada to Mexico. I try to be
good to my mother, meaning
the earth. I fail in too many ways
to count. I drive my little truck north
to the island where my friend and I
test our aging muscles to row or paddle
to some remote wild. It’s carbon-free
and quiet enough to hear wolves howl,
like we did on the spit, camped in
that opening in the old cedar grove,
a holy home nothing built could hold.
Once, my friend swam from one island
to another. Her good husband following
in the sit-on-top kayak. Five miles,
naked, her body coated in lanolin,
a layer of sheep fat over her skinny
arms. Out there kicking in her nakedness,
she was safe enough for animals
to come close. A seal skimmed beneath,
turned over to meet her eyes. This
could never have happened if
fossil fuels were involved. I’m afraid
my friend is right, my own fuzzy
accounting, the need for some ruthless
numbers we should all be awake to.
Look at my friend, after her long swim, ribbons
of kelp on her legs, emerging naked and tired
and exquisitely happy from the sea.
—
Anne Haven McDonnell lives in Santa Fe, NM and teaches creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. A 2023 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, she is the author of Breath on a Coal, winner of the Halycon Poetry Prize (Middle Creek Press), and the chapbook Living with Wolves from Split Rock Press. Her poetry has been published in Orion Magazine, Narrative Magazine, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere.
