Ardentia Verba
       

the ocean laps toward shore, but land puts nearly its whole
body underwater as if to live there, where touch decides

we know nothing

each medusa an organ disguised as debris
the autocracy of the photon disperses, the diluted

light of the moon returns to the surface, gently tosses
tulle over a language of living tissue, the distinction

between animal and location all but illegible, organized sea
water amasses at the edge of breath to feed—mass

ascension—radiant inkling of asterisms—in hydrostatic
spirals deep below where the ocean hears the heart

of the earth churning, urchins spill their sperm & eggs
while jellyfish light up the sensory bath—instruments

in the submersible bleached blue—mate & prey in sheer
incandescence, luminosity a lure, lines of stinging cells

billowing

Copyright © 2009 dawn lonsinger All rights reserved
from The Nested Object
Dancing Girl Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission