Let The Living Return To The Sea
Last night we watched a baby
octopus
on video with a child. It had
washed
ashore the border of tide, white
water
the water’s distance from air.
Living thing
moved a line of coral foam,
undulating
tentacled legs, water retreating to
its mouth,
gliding its spectral torso over
glazed sand.
We come to this town to bury the
dead,
but dinner, we hear two births will
come,
and the dead take turns at quiet
instead.
There are photos, printouts from
ultrasounds—
mothers and mothers to be for the
first
pass images around the table. One
niece
has a baby inside that could be an
octopus,
bulge of light rounding like a
head—it is a head—
a shadow that will be eyes, but the
hands
wave flippers in ink and legs like
a tail
in the gray sea, the precise hope
for fingers,
toes, and bones. The miracle brain
inside
space the size of a pearl begins to
steam,
begins the vision.
The
other niece is showing,
stomach swelling beneath her blue
dress,
the child inside her with limbs,
hands already
brought to its mouth, a face
becoming its face,
one of us. In the photo, we see
ribs, translucent
skin over ribs, hips hiding—we will
know
in weeks, she, he, sex blooming the
waters.
Another child has been watching the
octopus,
has put on the mask of a monster, climbs
the back
of Auntie’s chair, his red hair no
brighter than fire
he puts into space. He knows the
small thing
in the darkness comes for him,
sister, brother,
love, this self coming, sacred book
illustrated
by the monk who studies shells and
moth wings,
saints
and all their signs, angel, bird, ox, and lion,
and
we know the cells find their way to
hair,
fingernails,
eyes that change the muted world
into
forests inside the brain, octopus pulled
back
into the entire sea by wave, pulsing heart
of
all water, drawing it inside, pushing against it,
propelling
its body through distance that lasts,
the
bright coral, clown fish, eels, above water,
sky
wrapped around the globe and the mind
that
writes it all down in grief, in joy, Being
itself,
brief and infinite, raspberry, sparrow.
About
the Poet:
Joel Long’s book Lessons in Disappearance was published in
2012. Knowing Time by Light was published by Blaine Creek Press in 2010.
His book Winged Insects won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was
published in 1999. His chapbooks, Chopin’s Preludes and Saffron
Beneath Every Frost were published from Elik Press. His poems have appeared
in Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Quarterly West, Gulf Coast,
Rhino, Bitter Oleander, Crab Orchard Review, Bellingham Review, Sou’wester,
Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, Poems and Plays, and Seattle Review, and
anthologized in American Poetry: the Next Generation, Essential Love, Fresh
Water, and I Go to the Ruined Place. He received the Mayor’s Artist
Award for Literary Arts at the Utah Arts Festival and the Writers Advocate
Award from Writers at Work.
About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.
