the constellation flying fish

What is the meaning of flying fish?
Biplanes in a water-green world.
What more could sound suggest than artless object?
—what to signify with cattail? With milkweed?

Afternoon.
Succulence for burnt flesh.  Rest.

—a flight of birds. Feathers.
A simple samara, one-winged seed.  A silver dollar.

What is the fruit
of the ash?

Be sure what it is you collect:
datura—violent capsule, breeding prickles.

A drift into darkness.
Nothing can question nighttime,
how stars scatter like birds or seeds.

What plan, symmetry?—the carpals
of a netted leaf, a hand, a dorsal?

Except beauty.  Except nights
when only fish break the surface.

The quick, plastic scent of belladonna.
The wafer ash, leaves murmuring like shoals.
The easy membrane of moon on the water.

The goldfinch, the wren, and the owls;
the kingfisher and the vulture.

Who watches tonight?

What shadow slides from tree to tree,
from leaf to leaf like a rain
of scales? Like a leap, into the air?

If you slip your fingers through the soft musk of thyme,
what scent will cling to your hand?

If your hand, brushing upwards, catches a fin in the palm,
what will you believe in the morning?