Ode

Oh, let us sing in praise of fish, bony,  jawless, cartilaginous. Our ode is owed, there is no doubt. All is exists to sing this out. I have had a friend, a fish who died.

You have the right to wonder why this is musing worthy. Before all, fish begin in masses of eggs set sail in endless clouds of milky sperm. Quantity rules, for mortality is ever lurking. Fish are food a-sail, assailed by their obsolescence from genesis.

Even pet fish are merely briefly noted in mother talks with children, then flushed away with confused object lessons of managed emotion and politically correct bowel motion.

Yet they have such excellent parts: Fins of beauty dance, lateral lines that scintillate to motion, scales like perfectly shining mosaics, endlessly deep mouths in endless rhythm, gills of undersea air feathers.

And their eyes: Their eyes roll in the ten directions, sensing with an intelligence of total equanimity. This is not coldness. No fish is cold. The nature of fish is that of complete responsiveness: Temperature out is temperature in. How can this be named cold-blooded? After all, this is the passion of extreme connection, of total union, of no separation.

Here there are no walls. The fish and the water are one. And so it goes, rippling out. This oneness is not to be intimidated. It flows beyond itself, beyond the fish, beyond the sea, beyond the womb, beyond the dish who ran away with the spooning.

So let us sing in praise of prey, eaters of fish and ewe and eye.

Pirates all, this prey is prayer, in earth and heat and sea and air.

Perhaps the sun has shone for five billion years and will shine for five billion more. And we prey, all, on its light, photosynthesis transformed. Ode to plants who channel this to fish and beyond.

Ode to the supreme plants, the trees from whom hang suffering servants, spiritual savants. Ode to ewes given in sacrifice, blackened rainbows chased into the desert of sand without water or fish. Ode to eyes plucked from heads, given as oblation, ablation in hope of wisdom.

Ode to our Odin, who gave this eye gift while hanging between earth and sky, who gives to worthy poets the mead of inspiration, who leads the hosts of the slain in the wild hunt across the sky. Ode to these hosts of hunters, the eaters and the eaten, all slain in the unraveling reveling.

Now my friend who died is wrapped in white, swaddled in a blanket, baby of the universe. He is in the earth. And so the earth is less solid now. Now the earth moves with the grace of the sea. We live in and walk on a Perelandra of possibility, for his presence under the earth swims us into that.

Now we are able to prey upon the rubbings in our mind, the onsite records made in haste while we stand ready for the hunt that we missed millennia ago. Cave paintings of the hunt, of tainted pains, are unfelt in the act of remembering. Countless eggs in infinite sperm smoke are hooking up for the dance that we try to capture in our stories.

But despite our narrative glue, there is hatching in the seeing, in the sea. Then there is the crawling onto land. From bubbles in water to footprints to bubbles in air to stories in mind, and then to fish for me.

Yet it is I who have been caught. Hooked, strung along, longing.

But now there is no more glass separating us. No more transparent shield, unyielding, creating pretense of vision that is no more.

That eye given for wisdom is now mine. I have prayed for it, and I have been preyed upon.

With fish I swam, with fish I died, with fish I dance into the earth-sea.

Do you want to come?

Will you recognize me? Will you know my scales?

Will you slip me on like a wet suit, inside out intention, you in tent of me, intent, content, relenting? My eye intent on you is ewe sacrifice of praise. I am ode.

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes t o inspire profound mutiny in all those w ho care to read. Our Rx may be wearing a pirate cloak of in visibility, bu t emanating fr om within this shadow is hope that r eaders will f eel free to respond. Who kno ws: You may even inspire the muse. Mak e contact if you dare.