At The Fish Houses  ( After Elizabeth Bishop )

Necessity in death and dying;    
its cold nature a hardened breast  
  of rocks nursing the evolution    
of time and time gone by    
   
Come the coastline in season    
  burning its way through glassy sand    
shattered shards of granules    
  sinking beneath its watery breath    
   
You remembered your mother    
  that Nova Scotian ice-rattle of lungs;    
their spindly pinnacles dissolving    
  under arthritic air brittle with bone    
   
You sit, serenading a seal    
  its interest lacking in salvation of self;    
the bellowing hymn reverberating    
  the chorus of your throated larynx    
   
Where there was wood came moss    
  steal came rust, planktons suckling    
brine from the underbelly of boats    
and silver, silver everywhere you looked:    
   
the sea tolling as melted molten;    
  fish houses glistening intestinal remains;    
ramps ribbed with codden scales    
  all the color lining clouds;    
   
deep shadows suspended overhead    
  absorbing dark secrets into their womb    
spilling when too bloated to carry further  
as human burdens dredging truth    
   
Perhaps unwanted knowledge    
  stillbirthed before its time    
to burgeoning lives unwilling to learn    
or accept alteration as a peripheral term    
   
But you observed from the start    
  beauty in a changling death    
glory in the art of aging    
that some knowledge, somewhere    
   
  would finally explain if you sang. . .  
or looked just a little bit harder    
~    
 
 
Inspiration  
 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52192/at-the-fishhouses
 
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