New poem (revised again)

(I've been tweaking and tweaking...)


Dolphins

Lowering into the water, the kind
you can’t feel your skin in,

I slide above the spiny, slippery
reef. Tepid embryonic fluid, it’s

the moment of take-off,
the moment of flight and hover.

Silver and turquoise darters turn
to Escheresque camouflage. My lungs

are snorkel-submerged, my breaths
embedded in my skin. I’ve melted

into the world’s belly. Is this what
dying is? What is that clicking,

that sunken squealing? That pulse
of shadow, of gray that grows and grows

to fleshy bodies book-ending me?
They are soft granite. A tomb expunging

thought and being. They obliterate
the soul, or the need for one.


--Kate Evans