SACRED

by Joanna Lee 

                     --for S.

Sometimes whale song
sounds like Spanish reggae

off a clouded northwest coast & the guy
in the next truck over
is singing along to about every other word
as he unslings his board
and slip-climbs across the driftwood.

The sign to the beach
says Prevent Suicide / Dial 988 or Text “Native” to _____ /
and squinting
at the waterspouts in the distance I’m
thinking about you

not
because of anything the sign says
or doesn’t but because the idea
of those spouts might trigger

a smile through the grief
that has weighed you to a bottom

for weeks. Todo lo que querido,
surfer guy croons, all I have ever wanted, and I wish
I knew how to translate this
place, how

it makes me feel
no sadness should exist here.

But I’m a stranger, to all of it, and all
I can see
with the night closing in like a net

is the smallest sliver, a silvered glimpse
of the song maker—

the belief
that the spouts are there, are
the exhale on the downbeat
of something bigger than any of us.     

Founder of the Richmond, Virginia community River City Poets, Joanna Lee earned her MD from the Medical College of Virginia and a Master’s in neuroscience from William & Mary. Her work has been published in JAMA, Rattle, Contemporary American Voices and elsewhere. A four-time alum of Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project, she is the author of the chapbook Dissections, a co-editor of the anthology Lingering in the Margins; and the current Poet Laureate for the city of Richmond.