Vessel

A Fish Devours Our Light

Night salt crucified the fish,
able-bodied, tempted by 
their death currents, 
they followed the rhythm
of their requiem,
surging silky through their mass,
a lake at night swelling
to become an everblue world
without density,
its lapping ripples are mirrors
with dark faces,
they vanish yet they thought
they will never die,
they refract the third plain on their palms.

Light, an inch thick,
you could hold it in your hand,
a wink slit through a continent
of cloud and storm complexion,
fans through the night,
a silver-throated fish leaps
as a reverse comet,
an anti-revelation,
a falling and ascending
and the fish devours 
our light.

And this was destiny,
though this fish said:

I WILL NEVER BE A VESSEL

The prideful bear
the world,
and think it often
best to shrug.

In the belly of the fish,
the eternal light,
and the night rolls,
sparse as starlight,
the reeds roam and are still 
at last,
blind as seers to the proverbial 
volume,
blind to
waters uncharted by
thought.

But the cool air looms lost in
negative space,
and a plain without dimension,
air without content to breathe,
we're dying false as cards,
milk teeth spill as tears from
a sun unused,
unseen by unmade children 
made in mind and matter,
they become ill choirs of winds,
breezes chalked on the caves
of Time.

I tell you, no boats break those
waters, 
and still,
a fish has our light,
and the dark has us.

I tell you,
we have no fishers anymore.

There are no fishermen out there.
Anymore.
The fish says:

I AM A VESSEL FOR MY GLORY.

And we return a thought
that keeps us keepers of the dark:

ON THESE WORDS OF SAND,
I BUILD MY WORLD.