May 30, 2023After Senza Titolo
painting by Corrado Cagli
I promised him I would not say
grasshopper, or superman. So
Fortune is this fish and this
flower, and neither are the body—
not some smart flat
of a knife. Not some
wondering about the stars.
The coming into the world
insectile, or some dumb gang
of coral, smacked with its first air—
I can’t look at a fish without thinking
how lucky they are to have
the ocean. How can they watch
the stars? It’s beautiful
what must be substitute,
their words for night,
the different way they
hold their fins.
How we come into
this thin tissue with a stroke
of fingertip over gill, the words
we have to explain, dumb
as the coral—wing to bird, fin
to fish, leaf to tree—is that
the best we can do?
Our heartbreak is last year’s
nest, the frozen lake, the yard
we forgot to rake. The lie
is that we’ll miss our families most.
Instead: the silver batteries
agitating the surface of the water,
the things we aren’t—some wild
mating we can only read about,
all strange biology and our hearts
that are a part of it, kept from us,
something else we’re not. We’re
made up of servants
without a lord, working to push us
toward cold water and
it’s beautiful, we’re science
and there is no substitute
for the stars. Not mother
or husband or daughter, but fish,
but finch, but fir.
from #32 - Winter 2009