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.