Adrift by Peter Munro
Because molecules of sweet oils gather like light to float
diatoms near the surface, because tall swells roil salt and blue
and green and sweep the etched-glass cases that wall
the single cells, because diatoms focus,
as a lens, the torrential light in its roaring
through the narrow bore that is the sea or a pond
glass-hard on a Sunday afternoon, gleaming under alder leaves,
because light made flesh
in copepods and leopard frogs and sculpin
and fast-twitch muscle in a steelhead's fletch
snaps as bright as krill, because each electron spills
in oxidative phosphorylation and I chew leafy greens for trace elements,
because chloroplasts burst at first contact with stomach acids
and amines are released to a new temple,
because I respire in sacred building blocks,
because a herring was startled to dive but the sea eagle ignored me,
because I have drunk diatoms without a trace of bitternessI dead-reckon the gates of praise with a rumbling in my gut
and I hunker down the courts of brine with the sea breaching my tongue,
dismayed by the preaching I bring to wind,
though the sun smeared compelling
and purely random
evidence over the understory of clouds
of terrible harvest.Therefore: I find the glass cell-
hulls to float green, swollen with light
until copepods release their long scythes,
hungry as bread crusted in this fire-
woven basket of dust, in my
loneliness, in the salt-red rage where an orphan clings. Therefore:
The dust-woven caskets of shine float too tiny,
too low, a few centimeters under the surface,
though the Rachel hunts and hunts.
