Ha Long
Something as mountainous as a mountain ought not to have a shadow
shivering on the waters. It is too obvious
a lie. When their father falls, the shadows will not survive. Like many of us,
they are already teetering on the border
of what is real and what we wish
was there. The motor of the boat
makes me nauseous not because it moves but because it feels too close
to the blades of a helicopter hovering above
a city with its searchlights open wide like the wings of a butterfly wanting
nothing more than to have its say in things it does not understand.
The guide tells me that this sea is not a sea, but
that is a technicality. Anything this large is a sea,
including a helicopter, a mountain, a blade, or
a mouth tracing the scars that the water has left
on the serrated bottoms of the rocks. There used to be more to them,
but just like everything around them they grew old
and the sea began to look less like a sea and more
like a technicality. Even so, all day they look
at their shadows, denying their fear but not their mass.
The Great Greenland Shark: Timeless.
When I was thirteen years old the Ancient Greeks took me
to the cave that had stopped being a cave
when they told it to be a miracle and it, like an unburdened puppy,
sat up and listened
before speaking. Now it was my turn
to fit the impossible in my mouldy coat pocket.
I stepped into the toothy maw of the beastly boulder and saw:
a greenland shark, swimming in my breath.
It stank. I had brought coins and incense, but I suspected
my ancestors of pouring out their gratitude from below.
Eager to be different, I spoke. I was young,
and if I hadn’t been impressionable I wouldn’t have been there,
wouldn’t have been here, wouldn’t have done anything at all, let alone
been capable of understanding that great greenland shark.
Away, it swam, and it took my breath with it.
For the first few months after my visit, I thanked it
every morning when I woke, out loud.
Then, winter came, and I saw the shapes my breath formed
on the window of the world.
I stopped showering, and stank.
I stopped talking, and grew moss.
I stopped thinking, and swam,
out, into the earth.