Where are the coats greedy men
Sewed from sea otters’ luxurious skins?
Hunted to near extinction,
They fed on spiny urchins
That consume the coral garden
Where iridescent sapphire fish
Weave among branches out and in.
Now, whenever they wish,
They float upon the calm sea-mirror,
And, as we beg them back again,
They plunge and, in an instant, disappear.
—
Deborah Fleming’s nonfiction collection Resurrection of the Wild won the 2020 PEN-America Art of the Essay Award. Her second nonfiction collection Ghosts of Old Forests will be published in 2025. She has also published one novel, five poetry books, four volumes of scholarship, and stories, poems, and essays in many journals. Three of her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes. For two decades she served as editor and director of the Ashland Poetry Press.
