All Water

By | 1 February 2015

Been thinking a lot about gills,
how this flesh fringe can take in

water and air, how you can
catch a fish by tickling it

under its belly wearing silk
stockings on your hands.

How you can hold a fish
gently in the current’s stream,

revive it
as if it were a lover

needing stroking, needing
the brush of lips over glazed skin.

What is it we do
when we take a fish or sip,

pluck an apple, kill a man
or beast? Are we stopping or continuing

an endless flow
whose movement is toward

home or origin, whatever that may be,
whatever that may be, home,

beginning, but what or where is this?
Was it a cloud that formed,

let the first pure diamond
drop from its wet womb? Was it

first the puddle evaporating
in billion years’ young sun?

Is this why
everything keeps moving, why

the circle within the circle
within the circle turns?

Because there is no soil
worth dying for (it’ll

have us soon enough). We
are mostly water and all water

is a thing that seeks a home but has no home
except that carved in earth by seeking.

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