SELKIE WIFE

She’s walking the beach again,

watching the heads of seals

bobbing like a string of  buoys

marking the limits. 

Soon the water will take her for good; 

she’ll swim until her exhausted legs fuse

and her small hands fan 

to flippers broad as oars. 

She’ll swim out like a mystic

going as far as she can into blankness

until the mind forgets its way back,

becomes, at last, itself

the thing it sought.

Katherine Robinson's work has appeared in journals such as Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Hudson Review, and Poet Lore.