Metamorpheses


Quick syluer hath dyuerse tymes fallen out of the cloudes
— Fulke

The de Havilland Otter bound for Lake Union
leaves the harbour with ten passengers aboard.

The West Antarctic ice sheet, the Times reports,
is melting unstoppably. Here come the seas!

Hurricane Ridge, a mile high, is gone, effaced
by fog. Chum and cod in their element hide

from sight. The Pacific halibut’s a righteye flounder.
It will grow taller than a man. Larvae start

life with an eye on each side. Then the left orb
migrates to the right plane. Good god, nature

is strange. Hippoglossus: horse tongue. Homer,
Alaska, is the Halibut Capital of the Universe.

In the Bering Sea bucking fish whinny and see
half of everything exceptionally well. The poet

said the ocean’s another country. Whoso longs
to be skate or bird, basalt or tuff, looks skew-whiff too.

Having nearly fallen from the clouds, the playful weasel
splashes onto the blue lid of the underworld.



This poem “Metamorpheses” originally appeared in Agency & Affect. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 223 (Winter 2014): 66.

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