Red Pine, 48X66, oil on canvas, Gary Buhler
Consider, with Precision
How a sea sponge is located, dipped, squeezed
till, with pink water, phalanges are smoothed
from sand, cell crypts dry open in fish-tract air.
In the finding-line of the tide’s pull, mollusk lids
stick too— markers of the days their bodies passed
slickly through mouth-ground worm holes.
Here the sea sponge went slowly:
despite all appearances as a land-fiber
it had never known a place without fluid
for wet breath. Its fading reeked through the car.
At home, ventricles stiffened daily in the porch sun
labeled on the railing:
“Found.”
_________________
Amanda Gaye Smith