Out of the Fire

 

Out of the Fire, the Sea

By Monika Rose

So much transformation in once-cooking vessels, oven-safe,

After the fire passed them over, cooking them into sea creatures

A Corningware lid, sea slug of sorts, slips off the plate

Caught in a ripple of escape, in mid-wriggle

The slug, now a ray, an on its underside, a hint of mussel shell

A conch once a bowl, buffeted by flamewater, collapses unto itself,

A shell dreaming wings, twists and lifts past fern edges,

an orange hawk,  glazed on the underside, shrouded in splash fire

A plate, twisted into abalone flesh, maybe

Once soft at the moment of intense heat

Now hardened into shell, with trying wings

The heat at 4,000 degrees past the limit

The vessels could not have fathomed the boil,

The sheer melt ahead

They can rest secure in this new form,

For what could possibly harm them now?

Surely not fire, nor wind, nor movement of earth

No consumption, no swallowing, no biting here

They are untouchable, safe, waiting for a distant

Wave to move them somewhere else

I reach out and cradle the conch in loving awe

Of what it has endured, feel the heat of my hands

In a light warming, no danger of singeing or searing

The only terror left could be a shattering fall

A smattering of pieces reduced once more

But even this thought does not seem to faze the sea slug

It seems to say, “I have always been a piece made

To fit into another, and now your hand suits me.”

The others whisper, a wave is coming, and we are

Heavy enough to roll to another place.

We have been there before, been here before

The sea slug transforms once again into

An ancient fish before my eyes

A dark, primitive blind bottom feeder

This will happen to us, it whispers

To you, and see, what is the worst

That could possibly ever be?