John Okrent

Barrows Goldeneye

Black and white diving ducks
have punctuated this day, this day
that won’t come back
but sadly, fondly. I fed
my daughter chicken soup by the spoonful
as she swayed before me on strong little
legs that have yet to take ten steps 
ever. She lapped it up like an elixir. 
She still knows the gods 
are everywhere: god of the dog bed, god
of dropped things, god of rain—
nap god, book god, god of dread.
God of light
on water. She gulped the soup and cackled
like a god. When life is so much with you
the seconds must swell like a king 
tide. Today’s was such a tide,
one of the highest that will come all year.
It poured over the bulkhead,
pressed water through the faucets. 
I watched a barrows goldeneye catch a fish
in its bill and then swallow it,
which was thrilling, at first,
and then sad.

John Okrent’s poems have appeared in FIELD, Poetry Northwest, The Seattle Times, Tupelo Quarterly, Rattle, and elsewhere. Two of his “Corona Sonnets,” a work in progress, appear in the anthology Together in a Sudden Strangeness (Knopf, 2020). He works as a family doctor at a community health center in Tacoma, WA, where he lives with his wife and daughter in a fisherman’s cabin built on stilts.