Endless reshaping
not defined by the constant and unchanging,
but by difference, ever out of balance.
Not quite solving the puzzle posed
by gradients of heat and salt
(but finding anyway
a silkily perfect sequence
of not-quite solutions).
The buffeting heft of air,
the hurricane-breeding Gulf, breath-warm,
the abyssal drag of freighted Arctic waters,
the whale-haunted depths sing a siren undertow
for a grand procession into darkness.
A chaotic-precise ballet, of spin and tilt.
Choreographed, the countervailing currents reel,
pick wisps off one another.
The eddies shed and whirl themselves to rest,
a cold core flung out, loosening to nothing.
Unending, self-consuming ouroboros
snakily coiling in upon itself.
A flickering, lapping dab of salty tongues
taste the frigid air then vanish,
down into the hole of itself.
And comes up a thousand years away,
cold in its bones, the brilliant eye
dulled to sightlessness
warms slowly, eating up the sun,
stunning the air to a fogged silence.
An intricately braided Celtic knot
set to vex a monk
beyond the edge of comforts:
a palimpsest of prayers the salt tears trace
across the drowning face of god.
A glistering surface to the mystery beneath
carries the history of itself in traces.
A bomb blast, the muck of a species
shaping itself in its own image
with whatever comes to hand.
Strangely-attractive strange attractor, perpetual brink.
Oh, half-sage half-sane sailor’s guide,
track of the trackless seas,
and river in the ocean
Diagram Monkey 