They lie in parallel rows, <br />on ice, head to tail, <br />each a foot of luminosity <br />barred with black bands, <br />which divide the scales' <br />radiant sections <br /> <br />like seams of lead <br />in a Tiffany window. <br />Iridescent, watery <br /> <br />prismatics: think abalone, <br />the wildly rainbowed <br />mirror of a soap-bubble sphere, <br /> <br />think sun on gasoline. <br />Splendor, and splendor, <br />and not a one in any way <br /> <br />distinguished from the other <br />--nothing about them <br />of individuality. Instead <br /> <br />they're all exact expressions <br />of the one soul, <br />each a perfect fulfillment <br /> <br />of heaven's template, <br />mackerel essence. As if, <br />after a lifetime arriving <br /> <br />at this enameling, the jeweler's <br />made uncountable examples <br />each as intricate <br /> <br />in its oily fabulation <br />as the one before; <br />a cosmos of champleve. <br /> <br />Suppose we could iridesce, <br />like these, and lose ourselves <br />entirely in the universe <br /> <br />of shimmer--would you want <br />to be yourself only, <br />unduplicatable, doomed <br /> <br />to be lost? They'd prefer, <br />plainly, to be flashing participants, <br />multitudinous. Even on ice <br /> <br />they seem to be bolting <br />forward, heedless of stasis. <br />They don't care they're dead <br /> <br />and nearly frozen, <br />just as, presumably, <br />they didn't care that they were living: <br /> <br />all, all for all, <br />the rainbowed school <br />and its acres of brilliant classrooms, <br /> <br />in which no verb is singular, <br />or every one is. How happy they seem, <br />even on ice, to be together, selfless, <br /> <br />which is the price of gleaming. <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by southerndeb<br /><br />Mark Doty<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-display-of-mackeral/
