The Stink of Pretty Predation

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Syrinx aruanus – Wikipedia

Do not forget that beauty does not come

From innocence, not always.  Spiral shape

And grace grows large and often comes with hum

Of hunting underneath the waterscape

Of oceans.  Syrinx aruanus moves

Towards slaughter with a fatal slink.

Shell beauty spirals up along case grooves

While feeding on a worm.  Probosci drink

Life fluids from the victim as it squirms

To fathomed death.  No innocence is here

Except perhaps the innocence of worms.

The lack of innocence is bleak, severe.

  You contemplate the loveliness shell

    You hold in hand — forgetting thrashing’s smell.

©  Phillip Whidden