To Linus; That Poor Neglected Fish

by guest contributor Nickolas Krause

For Lucy

These trees outside today stand bare and stripped

of their regal gold and crimson plumes

which though now gone have left a fiery stain

still visible when looking back through the dark

glass bowl of the mind where memory swims in schools

of glittering visions flashing with myriad eyes.

Lucy, whose namesake is the light and aide of poets,

now stares at the watery tank as Linus waves

like a leaf of lapis, a petal of flame.

Azurous, the warbling fins float among

the ordinary foliage of unchanging green

caught in the nets of Lucy’s Aegean eyes,

and Moses, before the throne of God, looked down

at Zion’s floor to which that chair stood fixed

and thought it worth to note its immortal hue

and Mary’s starry mantle wrapped Christ in blue.

The world is deeper than what we can know

and yet by sight we grasp what we can hold:

a fish, a bowl, a girl, the missing leaves.

Attention makes a brief infinity.

Nickolas Krause is a poet from Silver Spring, MD. In his spare time he smokes too many cigarettes, and goes for long walks in the suburban woodlands outside Washington D.C.

originally published in cracks in pomo: the zine

Drawing by Vitaly Lopez @vitalyart__