As the water table rises you seep upward

a chilly ghost levitating

fluid limbs spread as the sun heats your body

water pools in finger lakes.


Etching ripples in their wake

water-striders wander the four directions of your surface

grass-kelp undulates, diving beetles plumb

in the hollows of your headwaters.


Lotus roots take hold and deepen

you rise slowly on north-facing feet

white petals burst through your visage

and a broad smile cracks your mud-encrusted face.


Ghost of earth future, risen.

I. Neptune’s Theater


A rock spins through the universal tumbler

and its warm blue pools calcify

as turquoise Neptune in his cloudy blue bath bath

builds a lace castle with his fingertips


Sculpts a submerged eden of crimson and emerald

where painted parrots chat up cardinals

butterfly and angel fry sway with wave pulse

and foliated coral fingers beckon from arched windows.


Neptune’s children are flat and bright, spined and notched

free yet entangled in lace mesh ecosystem

beneath an array of bioluminescent stars

as a gangly pretender watches and blows bubbles.




II. Sapien Siege


The hot acidic hand of death grasps

the mesh rends and tangles

the ecosystem shattered

reef’s loosed children scream beneath planet’s stars.


Butterflies impaled

cyanide-swooning damsels

mesh-tangled angels hauled heavenward

coral to potash, corpses to coal.


The pretender to the throne blinks

rubs blurry lenses,

kicks plastic fins

and moves on to the next show


Unseeing and unaware

of the luminous filament in his wake.

Self-appointed divinity,

deus ex machina.

*****************­************

Ann says: All of the animal and human characters in this poem (except Neptune and The Pretender) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation. Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine.”

Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.

I buried them in a shallow grave

outside the sunroom where their cage hung

rain washed their bones into a deep earth cellar

Where I descend by night with my lone candle

to find them fixed in strata, yet not fixed

scaled claws striking Jurassic dragonflies



My shadow flickers and dissolves

as I sit at the sunroom desk

Tiny scaled claws strike my head

Pinioned dervishes scold:

My suit of black and white feathers

my smooth hands and my scientist's smirk

my two-finger typing and opposable thumbs

my missing wings and manifesting teeth



We dinosaurs live on, incantations of ancestral rebirth

templates used, discarded, and used again

as our sphere cycles on, now warming, now cooling

the uniforms change, the costumes evolve

but the sudden-death scrimmage is eternal.

I.

Wild fevered summer cat

crouched in night forest

leaf-rustle, ear-swivel

golden eye-gleam, nostril flare

smell trail, chase drumming

hot blood of jugular pulse on tongue



II.

Barest winter, bones spare

as naked trees knock

hungry ghost at door

I crouch, invite you in (“I am not yours”)

eyes warn, my sofa, my fire

recline like buddha, one golden orb

fixed on me



III.

Cat-mind drifts back

ten thousand years

desert goes for days

sun-blaze on fur, sandpaper tongue

drink from Tigris, cool forgiving



Mate with five heated slit-eyed beauties

consider symbiosis, my ancestors

pile grain into a barn too slow to catch mice

while naked two-legged kittens

play with your children.



Humans will worship yet bury you alive—

our dead won’t be lonely

The mice in the barn will find

Master of Night

that no death nor game is too cruel for you



IV.

Now, fates joined

after your hunt, before mine

yawn and blink at the sun

bury my face in electric fur

you drape a lazy velvet paw

over me purrs reverberate



All is right in this universal chase

sun-selves,  shadow-selves

predator and prey

for life love

and death