In Heraclitus’s river
a fish is busy fishing,
a fish guts a fish with a sharp fish,
a fish builds a fish, a fish lives in a fish,
a fish escapes from a fish under siege.
In Heraclitus’s river
a fish loves a fish,
your eyes, it says, glow like the fishes in the sky,
I would swim at your side to the sea we will share,
O fairest of the shoal.
In Heraclitus’s river
a fish has imagined the fish of all fish,
a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish,
a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.
In Heraclitus’s river
I, the solitary fish, a fish apart
(apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish),
write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two
whose glittering scales, so fleeting,
may only be the dark’s embarrassed wink.