- Timothy Housand
Migration III: “Cohabitation”
But whatever passes or has
passed between us, I still remember
the day you made me laugh.
Up north, Vancouver-
Gastown-Rainforest dividing line.
All wood pulp up there
and we were young, a hot
vent-worm anger the only thing
propelling us. We
were peeking out noses from a rainbow spill
of oil in the water, fat cockteases
for the humans’ tablets.
The coral below us was dead,
bleached, the bruised pinks of ribs
jutting through a rocky sternum.
You swam down into the haze
and returned wearing a bit
of the detritus, brain
coral perched
on your precarious ridge.
I giggled in c minor.
It was a small thing, I thought.
I still think: almost nothing. So how
weird it;s this I return to
every winter, rubbing
my smoothed head
against the root-crested
Deltas of the Yangtze.