In the end
for thinking I
here, naïve, Edenic

unnamed, never
demarcating a new
whole, desiccated, lying

shore, picked at
by engines, hanging
dried inner break-

asking the locals
a greasy baitfish, no good
it stinks, listening

a spill, landscaping
water, suffocation,
an apocalyptic slaughter,

eating its own tail,
horror at discovering
of the a child

here, daily stumbling
I would never see
survivor slowing, turning

into the air, swimming
spiraling, circling, finally
and hear myself think Look,

it was my fault
could simply wander
among creatures yet

smelling that stench
place, seeing them
on the low tide

by birds, sliced
impossibly from the sun
water walls, never

their name: Mossbunker,
at all when too many die,
to the causes:

fertilizer, deoxygenated
imagining the scene
a poisonous snake

to express my innocent’s
their bodies, the shame
I had been, walking

upon tiny mysteries, as if
that first image, the lone
on his back, his mouth out

upside down,
springing from his home –
the fish is playing.