[In a story seldom remembered, sharks were ghosts]
       

In a story seldom remembered, sharks were ghosts
guarding the afterlife

since their rendered bodies had no skeletons,
just teeth.

The shock of that discovery
must have added new verses to songs

and widened the net of old omens,
but nobody knows. Those details

aren't the details that lasted.
Only this: The dead

step out of their bodies, walk down
to the sea, swim out to the horizon.

For some, the passage is easy—
a day, a night, a warm current there to guide them.

For others, the journey goes on and on—
if they killed a bear, or left a wolf's mate howling—

and the water is cold as a shark's eyes.
And then they see the fins.

Tweet

Copyright © 2018 Rob Carney All rights reserved
from The Book of Sharks
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission