Trawlers

Like ghosts, they are out there, mast lights bobbing
on the horizon.  I ignore them, hoping they never
find it—the answer from the depths, the history
of man, embedded in the skeletons of fish, in slivers
of phosphorescent scaly things—the history of man,
as yet to be drudged up in their drab nets.  They persist,
flashing their clandestine codes, sorting the fish gut,
overturning the shell, cracking the crab, the lobster claw,
studying the slime, poking and probing the solemn
ocean floor, as if some god dwelled therein.



*Note: This poem originally appeared in Medicinal Purposes Literary Review (print).