Travelling to work by fish - Rosalind Moran
poetry ☆
poetry ☆
Every day I am swallowed by a fish.
Commuter tides in winter currents;
blue light up front, illuminating
a skeleton. Rib rows; an exit spout;
and gills to let the water out
Spat onto rock, we pool onto pavement,
bitumen stone beneath our bodies.
Each and all are krill, slipping in the swell,
swimming in the one direction,
puddles retreating into nowhere
Labouring on our shelves of dead coral,
deep-sea light on lifeless floors; we spend
daylight hours moving sand around, until
the twilight falls again, and we seep back
down; slipping slack into the fish’s body
Gliding peacefully along the ocean floor
we are borne by the fish, its animal ritual;
navigating reefs and interchanges ghost-lit
by bioluminescent plankton. What good
creatures we are: so industrious, so light
Rosalind Moran is an Australian writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays, who currently lives in Oxford, UK. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Electric Literature, WIRED, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the June Shenfield Poetry Awards and the Cambridge Poetry and Prose Prize, among others.
