published in Poetry London, Spring 2005

Wild as Fish

We were never one, never one round sphere,

an ebullient sphere as described by Aristophanes

to be sundered apart, exposed like John Dory

or any other flat fish, to search for our other half

but as strange to each other as the wolf and bear,

lion and unicorn, our desire occasionally as wild

as the wild of horses: what then is the image

that foreshadows love other than strangeness?

The man at the airport who asks you, “I can see

she’s your sister but are you hers?” or Peter,

who after bird-watching all day, looks at his wife

as if down the wrong end of a telescope.  Days

when we, like sea horses, link tails and drift apart,

days that find us in the acts of dying or being born.

Sharon Morris

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 collection -
"False Spring",
Enitharmon

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