Minnows

Sarah B. Cahalan

The shifting baseline might, it’s true, focus one’s

attention.

Where once there were as many silversides as

grains of sand, now each is an occasion,

slim-boned, glittering in the sea’s

milky-green vitrine.

What a marvel even bleached coral can be,

the forms life leaves behind; even those

sunken statues bearing traces

of ancient paints.

Up the beach a child is dancing, having seen,

in the brackish undulations of

the seagrass,

a fish.

SARAH B. CAHALAN (she/her) writes about natural history, hope/grief/faith, the layers of places and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She has poems, current or forthcoming, in Dark Mountain, Stirring, Trampoline, and others. Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio (USA).