Today's poem is by Patricia Caspers

Portrait of God as Aggregate of Manatees
       

Barnacle-scarred in brackish shallows,
manatees don algae-green sweaters and circle
sweet seagrass. Submarines, we see in them,
elephants, cows, mermaids who tempt—swish of tail—
the homesick mariner from his vessel.
While we symbol their wrinkled bodies, while we
strap their peduncles and divine their patterns
rippling the surface tension, manatees graze
and glide gracefully, mating, or perhaps
pulling a latched nursling nestled under fin,
tide-rising by the power of their own digestion.
We—the manatees' only predator—work steadily
to save them as we serve them toxic blooms, motor blades,
ghost line. We monitor manatee distress, write it
in our notebooks, how they lift the injured,
their dying kind.

Copyright © 2025 Patricia Caspers All rights reserved
from The Most Kissed Woman in the World
Kelsay Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission