I am a sea lion hauled out here<\/p>\n
On this cobble, sand, and boulder rookery,<\/p>\n
This strand between cliff and water where<\/p>\n
The air is wind and the smell all sea<\/p>\n
And female. Others frisk about the rocks,<\/p>\n
Mate, nurse new pups, molt in the sun<\/p>\n
Like fat, whiskered lizards from the tropics<\/p>\n
Come to this sub-Arctic shore and grown hyperborean.<\/p>\n
I gaze at the waves with no inclination now to dive<\/p>\n
And go nosing through the sea for all those reasons to react.<\/p>\n
Right now I just want to kick back a little, take five,<\/p>\n
Savor this momentary respite from living\u2019s pact<\/p>\n
With predator and prey, my belly full, my flesh alive<\/p>\n
And protected by the Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n
Jim Hale recently retired from NOAA to spend more time learning to play the fiddle. He is no poet.<\/em><\/p>\n This Writers’ Weir piece was originally published in the Empire’s sister publication, the Capital City Weekly. The CCW accepts poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction submissions for Writers’ Weir on a rolling basis and will publish them as space and competition allows. Send a submission to editor@capweek.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a sea lion hauled out here On this cobble, sand, and boulder rookery, This strand between cliff and water where The air is wind and the smell all sea And female. Others frisk about the rocks, Mate, nurse new pups, molt in the sun Like fat, whiskered lizards from the tropics Come to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2246"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}