Gored Matadors and Stabbed Bulls Have Ancestors

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

Old oceans too have deaths.  Seas wither, dry

And turn to stone, compacted with their shells

And fossils made without an ear or eye.

They curled themselves, these creatures, in their hells

So long ago their fates are measureless

To man.  Our intuitions fail us.  Brains

Go blank as calcium, treasureless

Except in deathly objects lacking stains

Or any hope of living.  Deaths so long

In eons lost they make Pacific cracks

Like Mariana Trenches hide their throng

Below imagination, death’s syntax.

  The tiny giant thrills the killing brought

    Lie muted well beyond our meager thought.

~ Phillip Whidden