.                                             God made
them obsessively, thousands
after thousands,

on the First Day to break the boredom
of chaos. Now all the seals can see
is a nation of themselves

with humans as little stick figures droning
the edges in a constant flutter.
The seals call night

and day around themselves and the only
answer is the workers’ rasp
of their own voices

honing the air into seal-shaped crevices
where they draw blanketfuls
of fish over themselves

and nap to the certainty of God
bright on their sliding skins
like a sleek robe.

–James Doyle,
The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water
Accents Publishing

More from The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water and James Doyle:

• “the Dusk”
• “Queen Victoria Goes on a Picnic”
• “Fossil Rooms”
• “Schoolgirls”
• “Love Story”

James Doyle is retired, 75 years old, and lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado. His publications include The Governor’s Office, The Sixth Day; The Silk at Her Throat, Einstein Considers a Sand Dune, and Bending Under the Yellow Police Tapes. James Doyle’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and others. His poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s PBS radio show, The Writer’s Almanac, and on Poetry Daily. Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry has featured his work, and his poetry has appeared over a dozen times on Verse Daily. His poems have been reprinted in many anthologies, including Prentice Hall’sLiterature: an Introduction to Critical Reading, used in universities across the country.