Kelpie
       

If a hippocampus is a seahorse, what's memory
to a kelpie? Unridden, unbidden, unbroken,
he rides the breaking tide with crusted hooves.
Kelp twines in the mane of the kelpie. His hide,
soft and musty as moss to the touch. Don't touch,
or you will not be able to lift your hand again.
A boy caught by a finger at the kelpie's starry brow
hacked it from his knuckle and free with a knife
before the creature galloped back down the deep.

Deeper than memory, which is prone to tricks
and lets the flighty workaday mind muffle it,
his pasture clacks with coins, dissolving bones,
old wars' ordnance, nurdles and Garfield phones,
their eyes half-closed in exasperation or missing,
while species flare and gutter to effluvia before
they've been given names. If you could eat them
you would eat the little plastics of your own world.
The kelpie will leave you be if you say his true name.

He came to me as a beautiful young man
and lay his head in my lap to sleep. I ran a comb
through his hair and the teeth revealed his nature,
full of pearls, bits of flotsam, blue-hearted shells.
If I knew the secret of his name, I'd forgotten,
so I kissed him for any taste that wasn't human.

Tweet
Copyright © 2021 Ashley Keyser All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission