Poetry

pixabay photo

By

Lianne Kamp

While We Sleep

It couldn’t have been my dream,

this aberration – but it

invaded my corner of night

and I was there, complicit

as it unfolded – watching the

water stream from the spigot –

first the translucent color

of cellophane and then darker,

full of shadows, blood red and ash

I lay stunned and naked in the tub

as the water rose, and they fell

from the faucet – these large creatures

mistaken for homely mermaids

by travel-weary explorers,

I recognized their ancient eyes

had read once that they were built

for peace, even alligators

let them pass unmolested

and so, I too moved aside as they

nudged my thighs with their rounded heads

and whiskered faces, filling my lungs

with prehistoric air before they

floated, belly up and lifeless,

while I drowned under their weight

back into consciousness and felt

them there – washing up on distant shores

in someone else’s nightmare,

under the same moonlight that shone

in the same sky that drifted

inside my window

References

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/08/09/dozens-manatees-are-dying-mysteriously-southern-mexico-near-oil-gas-site/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c0319b4deeec

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-manatee/mysterious-manatee-deaths-in-mexican-wetlands-spur-quest-for-answers-idUSKBN1KV2DF

Lianne Kamp

Lianne Kamp resides in Boston, Massachusetts. Her poems and short stories appear in assorted print journals and online publications including: Poets Reading the News, Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Scarlet Leaf Review, Poetry Quarterly, Dual Coast Magazine, and a number of Prolific Press anthologies. She writes poetry to make her world-view more panoramic by examining it more closely.