The great moray eel whips her head out 
of the cave, demon-faced, cursing, 
a prehistoric ghost. 

Even with the glass between us, you pull back 
from the glittering eye, the thirsty mouth, 
this spectacle of ruined survival. 

I want to say, yes, death comes like this—
powerful-jawed and unrelenting—
to remind us, by contrast, how fragile the anemone is. 

            Watch how it waves, tentacle-bright.
            That kills, too. Just in brilliant color. 

Death always comes out stinging— 
bite & poison, eel or flower, 
disguised and hidden in the craggy reef. 

I want you to know I see the coral 
is the same color as the bedsheets 
at the nursing home, the same color 

as the scrubs of nurses who wipe your mother’s 
mouth and wheel her to Mass. And I want 
to say, yes, I, too, see her face in the moray’s—

the mouth gasping open and closed, 
the trembling jaw that spells mortal. 
We will all have our moment like hers,

we will all be spit out into that unfathomable blue. 
The cave’s invisible veil will float us 
into primordial sea. But until then, slip

            back into the darkness with me. Hold 
            my hand among all the glowing tanks,

all this breakable glass, hold me close 
in the water until the inevitable last.

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Header photograph by Deborah Hughes
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Black clouds
         roll & gallop
churning the skies
        some kind of preparation
               for war

shimmering sheets
              of slanting rain
yanked & contorted
             in elemental violence

tree-crowns lashing
             left and right
as if the enemy is within

the animal clamour of
wild doors & windows

          and then,

the sudden outburst
           of small feet upon
    the drenched terraces
             shrieks of abandon
                     & glee

and the frenzied hands
                  of mothers
clawing laundry down
             from the line

so much joy
so much urgency

so much nonchalance

as today as perhaps 
a thousand years before

impervious to the monarchs
who wield
           neither rain
                      nor thunder

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Header photograph by Deborah Hughes
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

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Header photograph by Deborah Hughes
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson