Asian Carp
are slipping through, as the lamprey did, and the zebra mussels, the Irish, the Mexicans, through holes in the fence, upsetting our delicate craft, carp huge and leaping, taking jobs as dance instructors, flinging their scarves of water, displaying how far even the awkardest gesture can go, how their scarves are made of tears, carp dressed for a blind date with history, accompanied by circus music, slosh and oompah, each and each, upward spikes, the neighbor’s radio or their fighting, who can tell? O world that does not know holy from unholy, that provides no fabric labels, here is tender flesh flying headlong into the boat, here is the breeze carrying even the tiniest GMOs gently across, an exultation of fittingness: carp the size of rowboats, dinosaurs exactly high enough for the branches, pterodactyls measured for their sky. Then observe the random irresponsibility of barriers, how our DNA climbs its own spiral staircase for good or ill, how the vast interior can turn inside out like a shirt, how glaciers come and go, the molten lava, molecular dust, how the hems of the Great Lakes unravel. Observe, then, what comes from the pit of hopelessness and rises on its own like a cork, springs even an inch or two above the surface as if with joy, released from what appeared to be everything but wasn’t the half of it. |
