A fish of a leaf
turns
its bright scale’s
cymbal
sheen
as it
falls
while some
twist
in its shape
makes it wobble
and drift
sideways
down
like a jazz solo
stretched
away
from the melody
so its fin-
like stem
flicks and
flits
until
it pools
on the ground
of scaly
leaves
with the barest
snare brush
cush
Grey Whale Ranch, California
Photo by Shelby Graham.
Santa Cruz poet laureate David Allen Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. Most recently, he won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and published Black Butterflies Over Baghdad with Word Works Books. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, lives in Santa Cruz with his family, and his website is:https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1. He is an avid hiker, and has discovered a whole new set of trails during Covid.
Featured image courtesy the poet.
