Waiting
Poetry
by Jeffrey Perkins
When I look into the water
I can’t tell the depth
only the way it catches light.
A curse to pay too close
attention to the surface
waiting for a whale to rise.
After forty years my mother says
her husband is either
the most complex or simple.
Once in a dream
a fantastic tail and at low tide
I thought I could see everything.
Jeffrey Perkins received his MFA from Bennington College and his poems have been published in Memorious, The Massachusetts Review, The Southampton Review, The Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, and The Adroit Journal, among other journals. His first book of poems, Kingdom, was released in 2020 from Spork Press. He was a 2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Watermill Center and lives in Los Angeles. You can find his work online at https://thekingdompoems.com/