The Bones of the Fish

The Bones of the Fish

 

The bones of the fish lie on the shore,

cast up by an errant wave upon

the unquiet sands, to join countless

other relics of barnacle, clam, crab:

brief flickers of life forever passed.

 

To walk along this strand

is to wander in a graveyard:

shells, claws, drying fronds of kelp,

the ghosts of whales long past their agonies. 

And sometimes, like a benediction,

the boundaries between fleeting

existence and ever-present death

dissolve and in their place a mosaic:

the submission of life to time.

 

The bones of the fish rest on the shore.

Webbed with sand and salt, even the head

remains, pared down to skull and teeth,

an awful visage, perhaps, yet in its way

beautiful: an unexpected grace glimpsed

in the essence of something offered up

still claiming its own small measure of space

while above in the living air

gulls wheel and wail and sing.

 

—Peaco Todd