by Anastasios Mihalopoulos
Even now, I can hear the crunching echoes.
Freediving off the coast of the Keys
there was the muted glitter of their scales,
ocean depth hemming the edges of my vision.
I dove down to meet the blurred bodies.
For how long and why, I cannot say but
I found myself lingering longer than I expected.
Watching them forage, birdlike, about the reef,
scraping globules of rock and coral with their beaks.
I’d read somewhere that there are beaches
composed entirely of the coral they crush.
And now I’m thinking of erosion, of the crunching tide.
How the only chance of renewal I know is in the after.
That it requires a different kind of faith to see something
consumed and reformed then lost to the current. To know
it will turn up somewhere else.
I can only recall the low drum of their feeding
gently bumping about the stony coral heads. I imagine
the feel of pumice between my teeth. The quartzy crunch
of stone reverberating endlessly through my skull.
Anastasios Mihalopoulos is a Greek/Italian-American from Boardman, Ohio. He received his M.F.A. in poetry from the Northeast Ohio MFA program and his B.S. in both chemistry and English from Allegheny College. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Pithead Chapel, Blue Earth Review, West Trade Review, Ergon, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature and a Master’s of Chemistry at the University of New Brunswick. Website: https://anastasiosmihalopoulos.com/
Emerge Literary Journal 