Today, 06:55 AM
If you wish to pull a rarefish from the sea
don’t cast your line from beaches
the water is too shallow, you’ll disrupt
the bathers lying in pale sand
washed up – too soft for the sea
or wandering along the shore catching
castoff shells passing castles
before entropy pulls them down,
melts them back into the shore.
Oh, I suppose that you could charter
some aging schooner wretch to take you out
Beyond
the sulking wharfs where ships are moored
like rotting teeth
out past reefs reaching up like beldam fingers
out to the murky thunder of the seas
and drop your line
down past where a wan sunlight strains
then deeper still into a trench that’s never
tasted the small seed pearls of oxygen
that get sucked in by undertow.
But that is not the way to catch a rarefish.
No, hear me now, you need to turn
your sights away from coral
colored buildings and travel through the valleys
then past the crowded cities and then
through the valleys once again
and then again until even changing seasons
seem to match the cadence of your footfalls.
And over time and time and time
and you will reach a mountain range that dwarfs
the long horizon. The air grows thin as you climb
and grows so cold that rough crystals form
and scratch along your skin until it stings.
When you have climbed so far that limbs
begin to fail and you are more alone
than a single whisper in a cave
you will find a pool so still and isolated
that your reflected face
is the same face as that pool
and you will find the rarefish.
don’t cast your line from beaches
the water is too shallow, you’ll disrupt
the bathers lying in pale sand
washed up – too soft for the sea
or wandering along the shore catching
castoff shells passing castles
before entropy pulls them down,
melts them back into the shore.
Oh, I suppose that you could charter
some aging schooner wretch to take you out
Beyond
the sulking wharfs where ships are moored
like rotting teeth
out past reefs reaching up like beldam fingers
out to the murky thunder of the seas
and drop your line
down past where a wan sunlight strains
then deeper still into a trench that’s never
tasted the small seed pearls of oxygen
that get sucked in by undertow.
But that is not the way to catch a rarefish.
No, hear me now, you need to turn
your sights away from coral
colored buildings and travel through the valleys
then past the crowded cities and then
through the valleys once again
and then again until even changing seasons
seem to match the cadence of your footfalls.
And over time and time and time
and you will reach a mountain range that dwarfs
the long horizon. The air grows thin as you climb
and grows so cold that rough crystals form
and scratch along your skin until it stings.
When you have climbed so far that limbs
begin to fail and you are more alone
than a single whisper in a cave
you will find a pool so still and isolated
that your reflected face
is the same face as that pool
and you will find the rarefish.