Lost In the Surf

The idea I’d been trolling for was hooked just short of the shore. As soon as I could see the grey beast from the deep just beneath the last line of the breaking surf, the thing broke free along a different ledge of thought. Too little lip I’d caught. O I had plenty of words-- curses, epithets, adjectives, verbs-- both for myself and the grey shape gone back to the dark sea, leaving me unbalanced with no upright tug on the line. I’d been tied to thought’s pull, then flaked from the wall like the cheapest paint. I know that too much lip defines a dictator posed in profile on a Roman balcony; but too little lip left me short of dancing in the sun with the coveted catch held up from the dark womb of thought, an alive and wriggling thing pendant from an invisible string