Exhilarating to hold
so momentarily
close on a string, beautiful
yet unfeeling—
another gleaming,
streamlined, well-muscled
teardrop configuration
of dovetailing scales goes
limp—inevitably slipping, quick
and slimy, through your under-
apprenticed fingers—and at once
is instinctually swimming mechanically
out toward imagination's deep and
freezing sea. But
it still appears just as legitimate
and perfect and precise
when you see it become
a sharp speck, a miniature part
of the grand and silent
bluesilver painting known as
Seascape w/ Horizon
as it did when you
first held it up
and counted, savoring
all its uncannily self-
similar parts. And sure,
it probably would've been
more nourishing
to cook and consume every
morsel, but—still, ad-
mittedly, is aw-
fully wholesome—just to look at, crude
and in the distance.
