By Dion O’Reilly

Featured Art by Kelly Basillio

Maury Island Marine Park, Vashon Island, fall 2023

Five hundred feet
beneath us, waves 
appear as ripples,  

their drone, inexact,
yet cadent,  

methodical  

as the shush of a heart,
a great liquid pump,
that bulges and rakes  

the blue-black beach. 

Listen, we whisper, Listen.  

The pulse reaches us,
and we can’t tell
if we’re flutes  

or porous stones.  

But I know, we both know,
I’ll leave,
and then, these present hours  

will become impossible
to hold, like coal
in darkness,  

a billion years, compressed,
but brilliant
when back to light. 

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Dion O’Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator (University of Wisconsin’s Cornerstone Press 2024), Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books 2020), and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Narrative, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Quarterly. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.