Bait Fish
Given that what we’re after is a deep-
dweller, our ramshackle craft not built
to weather but the smallest breakers,
conditions are never, say, favorable. The one-
eyed witnesses have since been
boarded up with their taverns, dock-
tales swapped for stocked ponds and earth-
worms dirt-drunk in a styrofoam cup.
Added up, we’re so far from landing it
that no one would blame us a bit
if we abandoned ship, a mutiny
we must admit we’ve flirted with
along with the 20-odd bartender
too grounded to believe in
myths. What brings us back here,
then, once again to this mist-thick shore,
tightening our gear for one more
foray past the safety of the sand bar
like gulls on the wake of an ancient hunger
that—at the end of the line—may
just as not exist? Look around.
Even on dry ground flash sudden
explosions of surface-shimmer.
Whatever it might be, this Big Beneath,
it troubles far more than our dreams.
