Imagine you're on Mars, looking at earth,
a swirl of colors in the distance.
Tell us what you miss most, or least.

Let your feelings rise to the surface.
Skim that surface with a tiny net. 
Now you're getting the hang of it.

Tell us your story slantwise,
streetwise, in the disguise
of an astronaut in his suit.     

Tell us something we didn't know
before: how words mean things
we didn't know we knew.

The first Space Shuttle launch got delayed until
Sunday, so we had to watch the Shuttle’s return
to Earth in class instead—PS113’s paunchy black
& white rolled in, the antennae on top adjusted
sideways & down for better reception. That same
day, Garrett stole my new pencil box. That same
day, Cynthia peed her jeans instead of going
to the bathroom & letting Garrett steal her pencil
box. Both of us too upset to answer questions about
space flight, so we get sent to the back of the class.
I smelled like the kind of shame that starts a fight
on a Tuesday afternoon. Cynthia smelled like pee
& every-day Jordache. The shuttle made its slick way
back to Earth, peeling clouds from the monochromatic
sky & we all—even the astronomically marginal—
were winners. American, because a few days before,
a failed songwriter put a bullet in the President
in the name of Jodie Foster. The shuttle looked
like a bullet, only with wings & a cockpit, & when
it finally landed, the class broke into applause
& the teacher snatched a thinning American flag
from the corner, waved it back & forth in honor
of our wounded President & those astronauts.

I am a body schooling,
a ball of fish, flashing
and many, in these early days
of feeling, of love.

When I learned,
hours ago, of fish songs
that swell like birdsong
in the morning,

how they foghorn or buzz
for food, or mates
or space, I thought,
now aren’t I a humming thing?

Yes, you say,
a body of oceans
and marvelous.

And the sea anemone in me,
              growing on the wreckage
of an old ship—

              can they grow that way,
              I wonder, on an ending—

                          Still this bright and tentacled
anthozoan polyp,
              which reaches and filters
                                                            whatever it needs
                          from this strong current,
              and the current too that carries
                                                            the sea cucumbers,
              the rough mammals,
                          the life, both vertebrate
                                                            and invertebrate,
even the batfish,
                          the black jewfish,
              and the terapontid,

it all swells and breaks in me
like a chorus at dusk.