Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water¹
Today, an anglerfish escaped
the deep to lend her light to the sun.
What were you fleeing
there in the dark below?
How the shimmer of the surf must have been stars
in the slow ascent:
how her skin must have sang
tasting the sun for the first and last time.
Did you rise to wake or sleep?
How small she seemed in life:
a shriveled black lung
as small as the hand of a child.
How her violet eyes couldn’t see how large she became:
how her light touched every corner of the earth
at the end.
¹Epitaph on John Keats gravestone
N.W. Hicks is a Connecticut-based poet. He is a graduate of UConn and earned his MA from Manhattanville. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Paper Dragon, Shot Glass Journal, The Passionfruit Review, Molecule, and elsewhere. He believes in water but works with dirt and dreams of becoming a river’s meander.