A tusked wolf dips its paw into the brine
the sea is its restless mother.
A proto creature, its bones already growing
razorback fins and horns, it must seek a shell
to hide beneath. The fanged manatee dies for love.
Before the porpoise leapt, before the whale shipped
its gray prow,
Jekyll and Hyde clawed each other
through a gibbosity of flesh. Where the skin flew,
rat tails grew gills and jagged jaws, while
blind behemoths burst out from small pods.
a saline transitioning that even now
wave-washes my naked feet, as the sea
plows me deep -
and does this cold moonlight reveal
the hidden talons of my ever-flowing father?
I have stood on many shores
and felt the long evolution of the deepest waves
where life spawns its leaping adaptions.
I have listened
to the trumpeting of great armored sea-bulls
echoing in the shallow bladder-wrack,
and on that splashing surface
invisible snouts blow from
an ancient depth below.
There where the tusked wolf
first dipped a paw into brine
a proto-creature struggling to survive
its bones already growing
razorback fins.
There also did the fanged manatee
thunder in its savage heart
as it plowed the screeching storms,
tempests that shaped its life
with its glittering saws.
Before the porpoise leapt
before the whale shipped its gray prow
Jekyll and Hyde clawed each other
through a gibbosity of flesh,
and where the skin flew
rat tails grew gills and jagged jaws,
behemoths burst from
slow wading, pod sheltering strays.
All churned in a rolling race
as if a keen edged spray
modeled bones,
a frantic saline transitioning
that even now
as I stand by a washing tide
calls and plows me deep
seeking my own extinct
and monstrous forms.
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