The Lobster

Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms,
green sand, pebbles,
broken shells.

Off Suno Saki, 60 fathoms,
gray sand, pebbles,
bubbles rising.

Plasma-bearer
and slow-
motion benthos!

The fishery vessel Ion
drops anchor here
collecting
plankton smears and fauna.

Plasma-bearer, visible
sea purge,
sponge and kelpleaf.
Halicystus the Sea Bottle

resembles emeralds
and is the largest
cell in the world.

Young sea horse
Hippocampus twenty
minutes old,

nobody has ever
seen this marine
freak blink.

It radiates on
terminal vertebra
a comb of twenty

upright spines
and curls
its rocky tail.

Saltflush lobster
bull encrusted swims

backwards from the rock.

From The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi. Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley.