Against Gregariousness

Facing the wind, the hovering stormy petrels Tap-dance on the water. They pluck the tuna hatchlings As Pavlova, had she been in a tearing hurry, Might once have picked up pearls From a broken necklace. Yellowfin drive the turbine of sardines Up near the surface so the diving shearwaters Can fly down through the bubbles and get at them. Birds from above and big fish from below Rip at the pack until it comes apart Like Poland, with survivors in single figures. The krill, as singletons almost not there But en masse like a cloud of diamond dust Against the sunlit flood of their ballroom ceiling, Are scooped up by the basking shark’s dragline Or sucked in through the whale’s drapes of baleen— A galaxy absorbed into a boudoir And nullified, a deep-space mass extinction Watched only by the Hubble telescope. Make your bones in a shark family if you can. If not, be tricky to locate for sheer Translucence, a slick blip that will become— Beyond the daisycutter beaks and jaws— A lobster fortified with jutting eaves Of glazed tile, like the castle at Nagoya Hoisted around by jacks and cranes, an awkward Mouthful like a crushed car. That being done, Crawl backwards down a hole and don’t come out.