Down here, where life first set itself on fire,
the living camouflage their light in light,
the oldest squid in luminous ink, cast out
as some night terrors are, as we get older.
Flesh goes clear in the mind’s afflatus.
More light, more light, say the ravenous fish
that break the burning mirror of the sea.
What could they know, the first to leave the water,
they who slithered from their fins and phosphor
to enter the honeyed enormity of day.
Did they turn back to look, I wonder, as we
who stir our reflection in the shallow
look for what we left the crab, the minnow,
the cold sun drowned beneath us, too bright to see.