What Self

Kathleen Halme

Nothing lived on land, nothing had
crawled out of the shallow sea.

Because they have no hard parts,
it’s rare to find the fossil of a jelly.
The farm boy digging a new duck pond
exposed thousands, like old verbs
stranded on the shore of the lonely
Paleozoic; nothing came to eat them,

nothing was sloshing in the shrimpdom.
A see-through diving bell as formal as a ghost,
the giant medusa waved her oral arms to subtilize her food. 
Who said life unfolds in language?

Nothing lived on land, nothing had
crawled out of the shallow sea.