flotsum

My thoughts are not so deep

anymore

like a tide ebbing

their surfaces steadily receding

drawn away from shore

by the constituents of my life

my son at university

his excogitations swim

like Kierkegaardian sharks

dorsal fins slicing the surf

snapping the backs of schooling ideas

with a confident head shake

swallowed in chunks

by rows of replenishable teeth

shards of flesh and scale

left in his wake

while

my boats lay listing in mud

moored to piers casting shadows across their decks

an insurance bill flops about exposed rocks

gills breathing in the terrible oxygen

oystercatchers loud and obvious

stab thick orange beaks at aspirations

hunkered in their shells

gelatinous globs of amorphous phylum

slowly dehydrate in the evening sun

further down the beach

washed up

carried by current from depths that never knew light

a giant squid

milky eye the size of a full moon on the horizon

will be collected by Japanese scientists

studied and dissected

wherein they will find

the half digested body

of a great white