Subterranean

~ after “Leaping Into Eel’s Death Colors,” Jessica Damen


From the underworld of dreams and origins,

it cleaves the darkness with its amber breath,
scattering roots, ground beetles, sand, silt.

It only needs an opening. A fissure in the earth,

a wound, a well choked with the residue
of time. We say depth, but we can hardly imagine

the measure of what can’t be fathomed.

Scientists call soil layers horizons—topsoil,
subsoil, and between these, clay, metal, rock.

The sun, rising and setting in caverns.

Whoever drinks the water in these pools,
talks to the dead and the drowned.

The eel hoists its silver spine and gleaming

banners up, and you know you’ll run to meet it
where the currents of life and death dissolve

the salt of all our longings, and the self

can no longer tell green from grave or garden,
and whether it is ending or just beginning.



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