seamonster

bone gnasher flesh shredder

SMOKE POURS FROM ITS NOSTRILS
AS FROM A BOILING POT OVER BURNING REEDS.
ITS BREATH SETS COALS ABLAZE,
AND FLAMES DART FROM ITS MOUTH.
STRENGTH RESIDES IN ITS NECK;
DISMAY GOES BEFORE IT.

(Job 40:20-22)

Sea Wonders and Strange Animals (Sebastian Münster, 1580)

PART I: a friendly poem, sea-beast to sea-beast

leviathan 
brother in the deep
bone gnasher flesh shredder
old friend, what reputations we keep. 

scrawled on edges of maps, tossed
in the sea’s deeps; they wish to
name their monsters, to situate
our abodes safely out of view—

but abyss is anywhere everywhere
nowhere at all. you cannot label 
it, plop in a dragon, henceforth avoid.
it is the steering wheel the kitchen table

a horsefly a drop of water slipping down
the glass. it arrives unbidden, pries
open the moment, splays out sickening
endlessness before your eyes.

of course, brother, this is the secret 
of heaven too: the sudden window 
opening eternity within mundane, nowhere
you can seek, but there - now - just so

and in another light, perhaps, you and I
are not the monsters but the gods

History of the Northern Peoples (Magnus Olaus, 1555); top, ‘the sea serpent’; bottom, ‘some kind of giant lobster’)

next up in the seamonster series