If Palinurus

You put me here.

Where ships are small
and darkly elegant. Where high
currents lace opaque.

I probe a craggy floor
for clues. Opal coral,
the anemones wooing

lugubrious forms.
On the verge of waken,
they lid with prickly fish.

I weigh less than a buoy
but you've tethered me far below
blue. I despise your epiphanies

and still the bubbles rise.
I nuzzle a reef's algae collar
and when a mythic squid drifts by

I reach for the salt-blonde tentacles.
They wave and wave away.
The gods love a tormentor.

I remember day like a first word.
Then sleep tugging
a thousand meters down. Look

up. Say something.
Let me hear the sound
of my celestial chain.

Copyright © 2009 Timothy O'Keefe All rights reserved
from Subtropics
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission