SHARK REEF

I am a temporary life form
Here on the third place out
I try to keep fed and to keep warm.

Two girls
in a grocery store
took turns weighing their heads
on a scale.

I am threadbare, worn and weary,
tired,
spent, with the cost of understanding.

We are fragile,
like a tiny clamshell
bourne out on the water
floating boat-like

The moon is hidden behind the thick grey
but I know it is fully round and ripe up there.
I launch my dinghy and row out into the darkness
sighting my course by a big grey stump of a