For Which No Model Will Serve

Pufferfish Mound from ThisIsColossal.

Who knew that fish were Buddhist? 
A courting symmetry of mounds,
indentations comprising the sea floor.
Iridescent fins laboring for 
a week or more against impermanence or
the gentle bloom of the ocean. Channel 

changes and a man (educated) is theorizing
each unknown to be Atlantis. Again 
and again, he misses the weathering hand of time.

Belief is a precious thing to misplace.

Of course, that’s how it is to learn a tower 
and a person - mistaking each movement
for a lost city or some faith.

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Hello! It’s a wet one up here in the Northwest due to an “atmospheric river”. I was determined to write a poem with the title/first line “Only a poet/would say atmospheric river and mean it fully” but I wasn’t feeling the rest of it this morning. I went for a waterlogged photo instead.

I’m still puzzling out this little poem. It starts with a fictional TV-watching session where two things I actually saw years apart collided in real-time, one being the courtship of this incredible pufferfish, the other being one of those Atlantis Hunter shows that was just pump fake after pump fake.

A few years ago I was fortunate to see a Buddhist Sand Mandala in an art museum, followed by the day where they ceremonially destroyed it in the name of impermanence. Incredible. Reminding me once again of the exceptional work of nature artist Andy Goldsworthy and also the diligent pufferfish.

The poem wound up ‘themeing’ (not a word but should be? ‘What is a thing in conversation with’ rather than ‘what is it about?’) about assumptions, meaning-making, meeting people, the challenge with mapping things to the limited amount that’s already known, etc.

Thanks for reading.