Poem: Deeper

 

Deeper

 

i sink deeper,

eager for layers and shelves of stashed fondness

to tug my embrace.

 

i sink past a whale

so barnacled it seems petrified,

past tigerfish quills, fearsome with rage,

and manta rays, cloaked and judicious,

lording over gyres of doomed grunion.

 

i sink toward bold, beautiful, lost shapes,

heroic, truthful, sexual,

far now under yellowgreen venetian slits,

and the diffracted, baffled bliss of the sun,

that coral chrysanthemum.

 

a different garden waits down below,

ripe of banishment, vibrant with love songs,

a teeming, ghost-adored depth.

no kraken except heartache.

 

will i be safe there

to plunder glints of drizzled treasure

fled from the hunger above,

the frenzied youth of sharp teeth?

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1/28/24 ... mods

12/12/23  "lording" replaces  "who lord"