A Ghost-fish, Languishing

M. Andre Vancrown

This is a memory...

torpid sluice of rising

tides, toes splayed in silty

sponges, two squishy shoes

ill-used to gull-gale gusts,

swatch watch's fluorescent

orange, its silent tick—

waves above, sways below

rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye

creaking wood, cast adrift

a mermaid's song to lop-

eared seas, to squid-inked skies,

and me, reverent, as

a ghost-fish, languishing.