Celestial Cascade

To know the Moon I became Scorpion.

With slick obsidian claws, arching tail and armored body

Poised to greet her, rising full against the lavender night.

Her face joyfully round, shining like iridescent opal.

Lifting her skirt of tides, they chased up the shore

submerging me in the salted deep

her voice cascading down,

“Your body has what you need. Surrender. Feel.”

Her gentle demand, to trust

That my lungs, book lungs, were full of air

enough to last hours, days, and I was not to drown here;

but explore, in that pale light of the silver Moon.

The inky waters wavered beneath,

Scales of tiny fish glimmered like stars above,

space extending in every direction around me-

Me and the nothing, me and the light, me and the Moon.

Until, from the encompassing night a hulking shape cut away;

a black hole with dark, wet, shining eyes and murky indigo body.

Long before Cronus donned his rings,

or trees spat up their sprouts from the earth

This Shark’s blood knew these waters

And to be in such a presence

Was a cold ripple of fear.

“Ask first what frightens, before you flee.”

The Moon in her halo of light whispered.

“The teeth!” A shriek of delicate bubbles escaped me,

“Is that all you see of the shark?”

And like the tide I was pulled,

Turning towards the long body, with its pale red gums

jagged grey teeth, and-

And something else;

The ease with which the beast cut through water.

The steady rhythm of the ancient tail,

left, right, uninterrupted.

Swimming closer until it was overhead-

Then long past, peacefully on its own path.

The Moons laughter sounded, a wreath of tinkling bells,

“What does a shark want with the taste of scorpion little one?

You must be rational in the face of what you do not understand.”

Embarrassed then I sank down,

down, into the cool and heavy deep,

The waters above swallowing the light of the Moon.

A lonesome oyster nestled against my landing place.

Together and alone, we rested in stillness.

It wasn’t until I could be motionless no longer

That the oyster gradually opened its mouth

presenting a lustrous pearl.

Silver on its tongue, offering the glowing body

“Even in the darkness you fear, there is light.”

she hummed from far above.

Taking the pearl carefully, I wondered

Had I come into the dark out of fear?

But the tides were letting out-

Surface pressing upon me fast like a sheet of falling glass,

The Moon now setting below the horizon,

A kiss of sunlight arriving far behind her. I looked at my claw,

Anxious to see the pearl in first brushes of day.

But there, smooth in my own hand

wisened, greying and powerful,

lay the tooth of a shark.