Phycodurus Eques
Hard to imagine their awkward dazzle
evolving, ganglia branching from nubs
of protosentient matter, into these
brittle-seeming denizens. Easier
to think a child concocted them
from balsa sticks and scissored crepe
she’d crayoned wilted lettuce-green,
and so set them dangling before us
in this watery air, ungainly puppets
strung as from an unseen hand
—except for the certain semblance
of their underlying shape to the sun-
devouring, slash-clawed beast
that slithers from the human cave
to embroid in time the tyrant’s gown
of flame. What mystic first dreamt them
adrift and potent among otherworldly reefs?—
so unlike these pale, imperiled offspring
of the planet’s dawn, which we cloister
here, as if the vital need were theirs alone.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
