Spawn

Under the bluest sky of the year, I stood at the edge of my world
and watched the flickerflashing churn of brimming life, the sea gone
white with sperm—the stench and smoky spew
of diesel-powered winches winding in their nets, beating
out the fish. I watched the shooting stars cascade into
the darkened hold to be later stripped of roe for
Japanese markets. The yawning emptiness between electrons
in the salty air—packed tight today with sirens’ wail
and squaggling song from four thousand gulls and brant
aloft beyond the endless snowy drift of milt
whipped thick and scattered into bands of froth along a tideline
with no vanishing point at all.
All of this on the same day that the radioactive cloud
from Japan’s nuclear disaster was scheduled to reach our shore—
all of us together in this self-made retroactive cloud
with no vanishing point at all.
We tipped and scattered clamshells in the froth, our lifeline
lost beyond the endless rift cleaving molten
rock and magma from four thousand songs and plants.
The salty air packed tight today with sirens’ wail
in Japanese markets, while the yawning emptiness of our elections
echoes in a darkened hold to be later stripped and sold
as fish bait. We watched the shooting stars cascade into
a diesel-flowered meadow binding all our heads, beating
while it burned until the stench and smoky spew
was traded for the flickerflash of atomic churn. And the sea was gone
under the bluest sky of the year, as we stood at the edge of our world.