This week’s poem, poet Jenn Carter offers us otters, wonder, and radical kinship. I love how this poem moves from the otters’ sleek bodies (which “aren’t just in the water; / They are the water”) to our own watery bodies—and how deeply we are related to all the bodies around us.  

Jenn Carter (she/her) is nonbinary, shy, Queer, a lover of nature and books, a mom, a survivor, and an educator. She writes poems about all of these things and lives in Portland. Jenn’s poetry has been published in The Field Guide Poetry Magazine, Frost Meadow Review, and Wilde Magazine. 

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. To submit your writing, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.

River Otters

Their bodies aren’t just in the water;
They are the water.
Here, in the almost dark,
The water, a body, ripples
With the wet slick heat
Of them. At the edge of the pond,
I stand still, quiet, breathless, captivated,
A trembling body of water, of wonder.

I hold tight to the dogs’ collars,
The hair on their necks bristled,
Their bodies alert as stone,
The heat of them vibrating against the chafe
Of my fingers, a low rumble,
A tiny earthquake, a whole body growl,
A ripple, a wave.

Otters, I whisper to the cold air,
The heat of my breath a cloud,
A night sky, a wind through the cattails.
For now, here, we are all related,
Our bodies not just near each other
But of each other. All of us:
The earth, a body spinning,
The stars wet eyes awestruck
In the deep blue-black of space.

– Jenn Carter

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “River Otters,” copyright 2024 by Jenn Carter, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.