this poem just goes on evolving and evolving. Here’s the fourth draft of the third revision/reinventing of it:

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The Bull Sea Lion

Ocean-skinned in neoprene, bug-faced,
web-footed, descending, cold

compressed gasping at my sudden shadow,
all looming black lithe ton of him.

Muscles scream flee in the face
of his face, of his mass, but

mammal flesh draws mammal flesh. Yearning,
a fear unfelt, I reach to him with my human hand.

What he could do he does not; he considers
me, he says I knew your mother once, surges

and dives. The shape of his bulk
becomes a churn of bubbles, each

an egg sac bursting empty, each
my selkie child unconceived.