Open Shell

Open Shell by Eric Ashford

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Open Shell

Light pulls apart
a few deep water images
with its starfish muscles
until I am a tongue
in an unlocked shell.

Occasionally I drift back to sleep like this
my mind agape
leaking submerged worlds
and pouring out a lucid reality
as I float
on a bed of kelp and spin-drift.

And because my mind is half open
it can speak as it dreams.
It can fashion a language
for the flying fish and the whales.

These voices come ashore
saturated into words.
A spongy exposed vernacular
of deep sea currents
that speak of the ocean
in the empty shell of time.