Flying Fish

Clearstories

24.5×24 in

Archival Inkjet Print

2020

$1,750/set unframed

Flying Fish by Naila Moreira

Above a depth of blue,
this elegance: fish
a-wing, humming Icarus in flight

from jaws of swordfish, marlin.
It cannot know
above the surface

of sea-halls dark as wine
(that other fine
means of fleeing this world)

a sailboat lurks, in wait
for accidental landings from
what for fish is the knowable sea.

Nonetheless it leaps
to this beyond, a warming shell
where, plankton flying too,

it briefly masters space
that we, too, brook, in burning
all we incinerate

to build the human world, free
in rocket, airplane, car,
of this surface tension:

earth’s gravity.
We spurn the bounds of earth;
you, the bounds of sea.

Sing of me, then, in this late
thrum you make, in escape
from one threat to your life

into another:
in night black
a deck to smack

that will humble us both come day.