While nuclear submarines nose between angles
of shadowy green in the South China Sea
where a new variety of seahorse
was recently discovered, the stately
seahorse coils its tail around seaweed,
a negligently familiar gesture, and hovers
in a world where everything sways.
 
Steadied by that intimate touch
the rocking seahorse stays in place
its hummingbird fins are a blur.
 
What does it know
hidden in the orchestral kelp
in its miniature G-clef body?
 
We answer its mystery with a category.
No seahorse knows it shows up in books
as a fish, and it doesn’t know the strategic
geopolitical value of the South China Sea.
 
Its coherent eye is so meticulously
camouflaged by warping shadows
we cannot see it as it sees
through its disguise.
 
The seahorse is serenely alert 
in its palace of kelp.
Everything is perfect.
  
Can there ever be any natural thing
we might contemplate
without reflecting mankind.

The seahorse is calm
below the leaping ocean
where wind tears loose
the hem of the waters
so they come apart
to come together again
and no one can tell

Thus my prayer for sanity is this:
  
Little flying horse of the sea
guide me through the trash
your eye wide-open, lift me
on the music your tiny wings make
without going anywhere
 
help me see through
this theatrical world
the dancers disguised
the choreographer unseen
without losing the beat

Everything is dancing
to death and everything
is perfect. There will never
be anymore this than that
anymore that than this.

Without saying a word
the seahorse stays where it is
its wings going so fast
we have to imagine them
to see them at all.