Anglerfish

From its very beginning life has been tenacious
even where the sun that sustains is away.
Death creates life and life is voracious.
We should all take a note from the patience of anglerfish,
with their teeth and their twinkling lights.

There are soggy rock places without any lights
where long pillars grow because the tenacious
water drips down as unstopping as anglerfish.
You can erode but you can't take away.
A cave may be hidden but never forgotten:
it will be revealed, because life is voracious

and the river that eats through the rock is voracious
like the empty-gut cores of the heavenly lights.
Two atoms merge, burst in pain, are forgotten
but not without purpose, because their tenacious
deathsongs light worlds that are deathsongs away.
In the distance, they look just like anglerfish.

When I am asleep I have jaws like an anglerfish
lined with spike fangs, and I'm dull and voracious,
like my slimy-fish past which will not go away.
The cave of my home is lit all up with lights
because humans have conquered the earth, we're tenacious
and build mighty things, we must not be forgotten.

In the muck of the sea lies a ship that's forgotten
by all but the crabs and the anglerfish.
It's a half-buried whale because silt is tenacious
as it drips from the surface and through the voracious
fish in the realm of the lights.
Anchors aweigh,

my boys, let's sail away,
cry the sailors, but they have forgotten
their names and the comfort of cities and lights.
They only remember the names of the anglerfish
and the sight of their bones being stripped by voracious
things that insist, because they're tenacious

they'll live in the vast empty plains of the sea. They're tenacious and won't go away.
(But they will, because death is voracious: they'll be forgotten
replaced by new anglerfish, burnt by new lights).

This poem is included in my collection, Poems Mostly of the Sea.