She was old
when the triceratops
first rammed their horns
into the trees that became soil,
became ice, became soaring steel
and concrete prisons, became ruins,
became swamp. Becoming herself had
been a beautiful thing: little egg sisters
slipping from their mother’s folds, into the
cool waters of a lake far more dead than she
was. Sturgeon live mighty in quiet times—a hundred years or more
—and she had been ancient even before her death. Such a being to behold: her
slick pectoral fins; her sinuous barbells; her razor scutes. / Such an idea, her passing.
Long before the comet, the glaciers, the humans. Her corpse, wisping away, and her, left
behind, a remnant of a lake so cold and pure and beautiful her idea of a heart aches for it still.
This swamp is not her home. This swamp is warm. Tangled. Steel beams wrapped in
thorned vines and here her larvae, or someone’s larvae,
play. / She watches them, these nascent sturgeon, as
they dart below a water-lily, mingle in a plastic cup.
They will grow here, die here, become ghosts here,
perhaps. She guides them, when she can. Away
from the alligator with the radioactive gums.
Through the cracked windows where the new
mayflies sleep. She loves them, in her own
idea of a way. / Sturgeon live desperate in
dying times. She watched so many dissolve:
flesh become bones become dust become
air. Become nothing, or the idea of nothing,
or something that perhaps never was. She
aches for them all, the dead and the dying.
She remembers herself through them, their snouts
as soft, their bellies as gentle as her own had been. She’d
let them live forever, if she could. She’d let them
swallow the earth. / The idea of her
is seven feet long. She curls around
her larvae, begs them to feed upon
her dreams. This swamp is their
home. She is their mother, their
father, their ghost. They are
beautiful, together, the idea
of her wrapped in the idea
of her children, the idea
of a lake, the idea
of a future brighter
and more alive
than anything
ever possible
before.
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