Currents

 

“He, too, had worked around to the front of things in his death agony. The hands were playthings that had to be cast aside at last like a little cherished toy. There was a meaning, and there was not a meaning, and therein lay the agony.”

-Loren Eiseley, The Unexpected Universe

 

Pity other creatures unchosen

for garnish of felonies

while evolving. Relative of carp,

the knifefish, larcenist of sky

coasts through her scalar kingdom

buoyed by electric pelf.

 

Mindless bolts discharge

in wizard clouds of silt;

invertebrates plead not to conduit

crooked pins of random wrath.

Does she interrogate her will?

Nothing flashes and is still.

 

Her likelihood surpasses mine,

incalculable, incoherent.

I should quit this serpent vine,

submit to orders year-bent.

When she gains my arms, clandestine,

there will be nowhere to heal.

Stainless age cuts with a question:

is her cloak of daggers real?