Katherine Gotthardt

Expedition

What I’m learning about losing my mother is how everything’s wrinkle deep,
each fold a wave. Open-eyed expedition into the creases of blurry waters.

It’s not like diving, second-skinned, heavy with oxygen and flippers.
More like hold your breath, hug a limestone close to your naked chest,

submerge yourself into salt and watch what burns into focus. See?
There passes childhood, a wild armed octopus, sticking to a memory

I thought had been buried in sand. And there, the blobfish,
flabby and frowning, lips pressed against its bulbous nose. I reach for those things

with smoother skin, try to ground myself by grasping tentacle. Fin.
But everything slips. Everything stings. And everything, oh so murky. Ink spray.

© 2023 Katherine Gotthardt

 Katherine Gotthardt is an award-winning poet and author of 11 books. Since the early 1990s, her work has appeared in publications such as Yankee magazine, Haigh-Ashbury Literary Journal, Frogpond, North of Oxford, Panoply and dozens of others. Her latest collection, Thirty Years of Cardinals Calling, was published by San Francisco Bay Press in 2022. A former adult education instructor, Katherine writes full-time supporting a government agency and is an avid volunteer. She is a founding member and co-president of Write by the Rails, the Prince William chapter of the Virginia Writers Club. Learn more at www.KatherineGotthardt.com.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review