—

Submersibles tethered: strangers

to see into the silence

the hidden coelacanth suspended

in the womb. They sing in high-pitched Doppler

to glint its scales; when nothing sings back,

Calypso’s monitors are black

(black is the sound of nothing there).

On the screen you are crosshatched—

mysterious like an echo: an obscure, half-told

fable forged by the clatter

of hammer banging anvil: my Hephaestus, my Hephaestus, my ear,

my

smithy ear and you in the clanging.

In the black, black everywhere

of the nothing there you consider

lightproofness:

the immense aloneness in silence,

the comprehension of:

“you’re not alive, if not ever heard.”

You consider disappearance with

pantomimed screams; this is how

it is through liquid-filled lungs, but

the soul wills to be heard;

it wills to see the other side of nothing; it

utters, it utters, it utters instead

from the heart a constant pulse, pause and pulse

to look out as the ultrasound explores within.