crossing the fjord
John C. Ryan (Edith Cowan University, Australia)
.
.
crossing the fjord of Bonne Bay
buoyed above the metalimnion
toward the ochre tablelands
in the distance desert mesas
extruded toxic iron masses-
buoyed on a plastic peasecod
slashing salted ocean slices
.
I have found that it is mental
as the lemur wraps prehensile
phalanges round a limb, so I
steer the rudder with hitherto
unknown articulations of toes
(proving something of evolution)
the pod nutates with each slash
.
wind hissing saline saline! with
each slash, my blood, it -blood,
less in gradient, while under me
a fin whale scuffs the tickle
with its innards, in the fathoms
the clinks of chitin creatures
scuttling the shallows -plumb bob!
.
into underwater chasm. where
I came from is disappearing and
the foreign side is nearing,
nearing, then at midway comes
the sudden sway of pendulum from
indecision to elation, the giving
over that is, at once, being born
.
and dying over, that is rolling
roiling like the water.
.
.
John C. Ryan is a second-year Ph.D. candidate at Edith Cowan University. His dissertation invokes the writer-as-botanist tradition of John Clare, Henry David Thoreau, and Pablo Neruda to create poetic interpretations of the unusual and stunning flora of Southwest Australia. He is a graduate of the University of Lancaster’s M.A. in Environmental Philosophy, and his research interests include ecophilosophy, landscape writing, and the human-plant relationship.
