Poetry and science both
suggest
the big, bad ocean carved him out in strokes.
Tides lengthened his tail, taught him
to beat his uropod to swim.
We do not need to envy
him,
who never caused a change in any single thing.
Humans, too, as we understand, are dross
of a process, leavings of an eternal imagining.
But what if the sand loosed to fit him, to tolerate
his fixed legs? And the waters learned to swoon
because they needed to be
inhabited, used?
What if we forged mountains with our lovemaking,
with the thunder of our
bodies upheaved the very earth?
And ferns unfurled in order to be touched?
What if we, the unthinking masters,
yearn unwilling, unknown, in spite of how
the very rocks mirror our presence, tumbling apart,
and the hearts of trees glow the colors of human skin?
Hannah Craig lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has recently appeared in the American Poetry Journal, Northwest Review, and Smartish Pace.