On June 11, 2021 fisherman Michael Packard was nearly swallowed by a humpback whale off the coast of Provincetown

I was inside the black mouth of my own humpback whale

when Michael Packard came to me and said, Wear your Miraculosa by the sea.

I was wearing my Swiss Dot party dress,

and we nearly danced, Michael’s kindness was infinite,

like Jesus, and I could feel his breath on me,

like the breath of the beach roses, rosa rogusa. This familiar Atlantic

and all the fishermen lost at sea. That bowsprit

I believed she was me—all of it above and below

the coyotes gliding through the sand, the cedar shacks swallowed and spit

back to the dunes, the grass levitating. A red fox crying.

The oysters pearling, the beach where the boys

take it all into their mouths and swallow. I wanted

to be that wild, that clean. Rosehips,

hudsonia, baleen, bird wing. I walk

the length of the cove. I swim

the criss-cross waters off Long Point,

my hair salty and tangled as rope,

my heart good to eat,

fresh as it ever will be.