Manatees by Robert Eastwood
If you came upon a sea cow
floating like a keg,
feeding on the sea-grass pastures
of a warm inlet, you would deny it any
spirit at all, with its slow-turning shyness;
you’d sense there must be care given though,
a proper protocol for such a sweet creature.
Maybe you would realize
shyness is a token of being unfinished,
natural, as rising bubbles of its flatus––
for manatee-bloat is consequence
of a re-imagined reservoir of gas.
(It’s not a simple matter to return
after eons of evolution, leaving your
early elephant cousins & pushing off
once more into salty, metamorphosing sea;
letting your limbs atrophy
into simpler oars, your spindly tail
flatten into a paddle.)
Manatees are at odds in their natural urges.
Through & toward unnumbered generations
they are on a blunted arc
toward knowing nothing, where desire
is a forgotten itch.
Yet female manatees still roll,
a teat on each side,
to nuzzle a prospective lover
in their instinctual heat,
their compelled juncture,
& ease into folds of ecstatic swirl,
blustering on the surface,
brazenly nonchalant, just as did your little pals,
in rightful celebration of difference,
making slow kicks, with skins prickled,
sidling mystery, close on one another.
Robert Eastwood’s work has appeared in many journals, recently in The Dirty Napkin, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Full Of Crow, Legendary, Softblow and Loch Raven Review. His chapbooks, The Welkin Gate, Over Plainsong, and Night of the Moth, are by Small Poetry Press. He has twice brushed past the Pushcart Prize.
If you came upon a sea cow
floating like a keg,
feeding on the sea-grass pastures
of a warm inlet, you would deny it any
spirit at all, with its slow-turning shyness;
you’d sense there must be care given though,
a proper protocol for such a sweet creature.
Maybe you would realize
shyness is a token of being unfinished,
natural, as rising bubbles of its flatus––
for manatee-bloat is consequence
of a re-imagined reservoir of gas.
(It’s not a simple matter to return
after eons of evolution, leaving your
early elephant cousins & pushing off
once more into salty, metamorphosing sea;
letting your limbs atrophy
into simpler oars, your spindly tail
flatten into a paddle.)
Manatees are at odds in their natural urges.
Through & toward unnumbered generations
they are on a blunted arc
toward knowing nothing, where desire
is a forgotten itch.
Yet female manatees still roll,
a teat on each side,
to nuzzle a prospective lover
in their instinctual heat,
their compelled juncture,
& ease into folds of ecstatic swirl,
blustering on the surface,
brazenly nonchalant, just as did your little pals,
in rightful celebration of difference,
making slow kicks, with skins prickled,
sidling mystery, close on one another.
Robert Eastwood’s work has appeared in many journals, recently in The Dirty Napkin, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Full Of Crow, Legendary, Softblow and Loch Raven Review. His chapbooks, The Welkin Gate, Over Plainsong, and Night of the Moth, are by Small Poetry Press. He has twice brushed past the Pushcart Prize.
