Slideshow

In Galway, the wind was electric,
Salt Hill slapping our faces
as sandstone shifted beneath us.

Coming from the aquarium,
you made me hold a spider crab:
turn it upside-down and it curls
eight red stalks across itself
to protect the soft underbelly,
a bamboo shield of meat and shell.

At the touching pool, I spied
a starfish with four points,
recovering after going supernova.
You told me how the lost leg
would grow into a whole new star
and not one child there believed you.

All suckers and tentacles,
jaws full of incisors,
darkened mysteries of deep seas
dredged up to the light before us,
I was grateful for the eel,
kept from sight, it’s midnight pallor
still in the ocean, left to tingle
away from our hands, uncaught,
a slick of ugliness
slipping through the streams.