Jellyfish

What’s a moon doing in this forest?
I hover above you, unseen but not unfelt
as you present your full face,
thin as transparent latex
brown and frilled as an old maid’s cap
blotched purple, a flower.
 
How is a flower a lung?
shrinking in, ballooning out –
bellows        parasol
        parachute        moon-mouth –
my words slide off you
like rain off an umbrella.
 
I have seen you press yourself
against a vertical rope of weed
and stay there, as if thinking hard,
as if willing to move,
then slide around it, viscous, untroubled,
trailing three, four feet behind you
poisoned filaments live as electricity.
 
And underneath?
Ruched skirts, creamy and crumpled
as a dropped wedding dress
hitched up again but unravelling
frayed tails, diaphanous frills
disintegrating threads.
 
What a marvel.
A moon in a wedding-dress.
 

Sue Proffitt

in collection Open After Dark, 2017, Oversteps Books,
ISBN 978-1-9068567-0-0