What does it mean to be
Hellenized in this fashion,
to understand the gifts
of the Near East before
they are labeled, before
they wind up in this museum

or that, tags beneath
glass, lines that purport
to explain their origins,
their river and pedigree?
But really only create
a vibration in the skull

like that you experience
when airplanes are flying
low over the sound and
the ferries are drifting out.
These might let you trawl
from lower decks, but

you must be prepared,
you must anticipate when
the flounder are spawning
and when the captain is
hung over, or maybe it's
simpler than that, maybe

we find pleasure in bile,
the chemistry involved.
And when we admit this
a light bulb goes off,
not in the head, but the
abdomen, as if we'd become

an incubator, or the heart
is a scrutinized fossil,
the kind that changes how
we view the history of life,
that turns the pious
blind. They try to shield

their eyes, but fail, using
the palms of their hands,
magazines not thick enough,
having photographs of
empty beaches in them
and less than a dozen letters

from readers objecting
to an article in an earlier
issue. One that warns of
the dangers of too much love,
of treating your wife like
the Belgian prime minister.

This is the terror that keeps you awake.
The sense that it doesn't matter what
you do, someone is always going
to get there first. Before you can manage
to untie your harness. Before the gates
close and the fishing tournament is cancelled
due to lack of community involvement.
Are you justified in worrying so,
given the catfish have all shrunk down
to the size of seed packets? And their
reproductive rates have slowed to the point
even those who study them are not sure
anymore just what reproduction is supposed
to look like, what it must accomplish.
Oh sure, we know in the abstract, and
we root for it the way you might root
for the team that hasn't won a game in years.
But that doesn't change the fact that
the theories all begin to sound like diseases
of the mind. Speculation of the kind
caused by someone eating lead paint
as a child. But what should we take with us
that hasn't already gone before?
That hasn't soaked up the last enzyme
or pocketed the compass that led us
to this point and no further? Like those birds
hatched from eggs covered on the outside
with designs that remind one of Maori
tattoos. Or the crest of the waves when
the moon has come in too close and stirred
the sea up. Out of jealousy, I suppose.
Because it is too far away and wishes
to be in on the secrets. The same way
your secretary knows who's been in your office.
Why she left in tears.