Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes? <br />The wading, wintered pack-beasts of the feet <br />slough off, in spring, the dead rind of the shoes’ <br />leather detention, the big toe’s yellow horn <br />shines with a natural polish, and the whole <br />person seems to profit. The opposite appears <br />when dead sharks wash up along the beach <br />for no known reason. What is more built <br />for winning than the swept-back teeth, <br />water-finished fins, and pure bad eyes <br />these old, efficient forms of appetite <br />are dressed in? Yet it looks as if the sea <br />digested what it wished of them with viral ease <br />and threw up what was left to stink and dry. <br />If this shows how the sea approaches life <br />in its propensity to feed as animal entire, <br />then sharks are comforts, feet are terrified, <br />but they vacation in the mystery and why not? <br />Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?: <br />what the sun burns up of it, the moon puts back.<br /><br />Alan Dugan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/plague-of-dead-sharks/
