Gillian Cummings

The Doorway of Ocean

I’m under too much… And the little shearwater,
the cormorant crossing. I was down by the…

And you said this coldness, just a wave, a wavelet,
so quickly gone, as the sea sets to the happenstance sun.

It was just a little matter between us, as when air
masses make rain… There are distances in the wind

when it copies the words that come between us…
It’s my fault. I’m the one who can’t stand being under,

being under all that water reflecting all that sky.
I’m the one who screams in the key of blue

and leaves off… Are you writing notes on the air?
No, you were the one who left, with a key to this immensity.

And I stand in the doorway of ocean, repeating
to your vanished shadow that I am the least of fish,

and I am tired of being caught by the trivialities of each moment,
the way the real fish are caught and swallowed and no more…

Gillian Cummings is the author of The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter, winner of the 2018 Colorado Prize for Poetry (The Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, 2018) and My Dim Aviary, winner of the 2015 Hudson Prize (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). Recent poems have appeared in Big Other, Colorado Review, The Laurel Review, The Night Heron Barks, Schlag Magazine, and Tupelo Quarterly. Favorite sweet: a Chai tea latte with almond milk from The Black Cow in Pleasantville, New York.