The Starfish Song: How the Biologist
Doctor Gwilliam, After Years in His Laboratory,
Is Deceived by the Duchess of Moisture

"He walks into the night stillness; his students
Are gone; in the west are constellations
He hasn't seen before, a dampness
He has never felt, the scent of a different ocean;
All the next day he looks at his planet;
'My love for you is still like water, total,
Submerging,' he whispers; though he has yet
To find a new Christ, for now, in a tide pool
A hermit crab purrs; a sea anemone
Flowers; in the second millennium
Of the Moisture reign, a starfish, his memory,
Sings to the peaceful, the sleeping Doctor Gwilliam;
Sea horses play on their sea weed guitars
The music of water, glorious moisture..."



Stuart Lishan | Mudlark No. 16
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