traced

[joel]

An ocean fish: allochton on the sand,
its slender gut but slightly domed above
the ocean-leveled plane like byzantine
ecclesiastic monuments in rings
around a still Aegean sea. I traced
its body with a finger, unconcerned
with details of its fins; its plastic eyes
and drying scales: ignored (when something dies,
it’s lucky to be noticed). And it burned—
the fish— until it stank. But I was graced
to find it when I found it. There’re things
that ordinary words obscure, that lean
on language unsupported, like a love
that I can trace but never understand.

[RonPrice]

I'm not sure that: "Every genuinely religious person is a heretic, and therefore a revolutionary" -- GBShaw.....but I liked your poem.-Ron