"Coelacanth” by Wendy Battin

Monster sleep,
what runs in your trenches, your thought
estuarial, briny or brackish but never fresh.
The tides have passed a law
for the conservation of salt, and since there’s salt
in blood there’s salt in every wound.
The little crystals bite. The thinking hurts.
Dear monster I

feel for you, would it were otherwise. Here where
river and ocean contend 
that river be river and ocean, ocean,
both are mistaken.
Where flow makes churn
and long waves ravel
and the stray coelacanth pops up, says Uncle
or Pass Not or Wake Now for monster

must be alone, I wake, obedient
weary. I dreamed you
had something to tell me.