A man's ribs might as well be a mighty whale's
when both rest, crusted, jeweled with snails.
Arching -- pugnacious -- through sea swirls
fishy twirls in teals and greens,
turquoise through limed accretion,
precious bone, capacious bone!
Flesh flows, it goes, is eaten, grows
in something else into something else,
transforms. "Pearls that were his eyes,"
Eliot repeats Ariel's lies, when the truth
is just as lovely. The orb is gone
beneath the swells, and his eyes,
His eyes become sea shells.
-- Retired Educator, sleepless
