by
Copyright Pau 1 465 197
point your hands like a compass to down
and dive off the edge of madagascar
into the tea-warm indian ocean
as the fathoms widen before you
in a blue-green peacock's tail
elongate yourself like an eel
round and flat at the same time
then move your arms in great arcs
and descend along the path of broken sunlight
swim carefully through the hypnotizing seaweed
over the ragged battlements of tulip-colored corals
until at last, you pass
the ironwork of the continent
and you are below the world.
here where the sun is repulsed
by the fist of pressure
blind fish like beggars
wait for alms
and the sea is a buddha
silent and dark
no progression
no regression
fullness flatness of tides
the eye in the throat beats the time
when the pupil is ready
the teacher arrives
wait
for the coelacanth
fish of rounded gills and lobed fins
400 million years old
last inhabitant of the devonian sea
if he approaches
unseen
unheard
ask him
how did you survive?
Francine M. Storey is a poet and playwright; she works in New York City. Her poem Instructions for Search won the Dylan Thomas Poetry Award at The New School for Social Research. The Coelacanth Web site is the image source for the illustration accompanying this poem.