Where I live, unseasonable snow in February, Our temperate rainforest, osprey and eagles.
A friend brings a partner to a gathering, a parrot who does not contribute, though
I learn males are vocal and aggressive. I wish for the sea near Baja, where
gray whales scraped the dinghy. Here, sea lions porpoise upriver,
fat powering them to the Cowlitz. A fin whale beaches, pleated and slick.
In Sitka, I held jade green herring roe, learned how Natives take seals as family.
Despite the lines of its body, this young whale is not well, washed up entangled in gear.
A woman holds her young daughter up to see: Chinook place their hands on its side, a wake.
Ruby Hansen Murray is the regular culture columnist for the Osage News and a citizen of the Osage and Cherokee Nations living in the lower Columbia River estuary. She’s a MacDowell and Tin House Debut40+ fellow and winner of The Iowa Review (2012) and Montana (2017 and 2024) Nonfiction Prizes. Her poetry is forthcoming in Nimrod and Pleiades.
