Fishing

I.

You want real? Draw your thumbs along

the backbones of fossilized fish

and press your fingers into the brush

of vertebrae, the singular eyes, fronds

of fins. See? Self-portrait. Osteichthyes fanned

in accuracy, bone-hollows that are you

exactly, you perpetually, you

who thought yourself detached from sand,

salt, and cannibal rage. Now sit outside

this tank. Want in? Want to be sleek? Too bad.

But imagine being made that way. Whose reel,

you think, wouldn't relent before fish-

mouths, the O a cavernous word out of the belly

where God is mean and fresh?

2.

A fish?--an angel on the sill?

But what if you accidentally

knock it over? Is that okay with you?--

water slopped from the bowl

through to the sheets, where, deeply, you

are flying in your dreams, the dead

glass flopping around your head?

The whole thing reeks of disappointment.

This line of thinking only gets

you hung up on quiet, peace and quiet.

That's you, resistant to change,

though sometimes you're God and sometimes you're

seafood, fresh out of water, breathing your

big letdown, shocked to see what you've made.

3.

Bagged, fell for it again. You look

to feed off something, and snag, it's eating you.

Say something, won't you? True,

something like utterance has you hooked,

the gasp's old motion was to blame.

Your little ocean heaves forth like a heart

bursting with insight, and while you want,

insensible, to be surprised, you think: flies,

it surely flies, neglecting that it seems,

only seems that I am I,

or that the wings of everything are mid-flight.

Here after the piercing, comes a still small voice

drying over the rocks where we came up once

before, and found us, and turned back too late.

from The Keepsake Storm