Poetry from The Literary Review
The Little Ocean
D. Nurkse
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1 DNA Before me, just rain, lightning, heavy surf. I came to the shallows at Ilapse, in the Archeozoic, liking the odds against me. A trillion to nil. Out of carbon, sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorous, I alone found the way to die— a pact between sunlight and something small beyond belief. I knew no predator except the self. 2 Diatoms We reproduce by dividing— does that surprise you? Almost all surface, we soak up gold, copper, iron, cobalt, and hoard them behind our minute flanged walls. We confiscate daylight and transform it into a long argument between you and me locked in a glass box. We are brief. Three generations before nightfall. So close to nothing we are still yoked to that labor, perfection. We are the wealth of earth. Chalky residue on a feathered oar, ghost sheen on the otter net these are outposts of our empire. 3 The Vanishing Point The paths of foam appear to converge at a fixed point but only in the inner eye, that tiny whorled chamber identical in squid and human. To arrive at the body is to make landfall on Burnt Island in gaff season—reek of dung, looped shad guts, banked fire. A willow whips back but if you take two steps you come to the horizon and the world without us. |
