Oarfish

                              In Japan it is the doomsday fish, a sign of earthquakes
                              & tsunamis. A messenger sent from the gods of the sea.

                              Ten to fifty feet long, purple shimmer of a body, laced
                              with a crimson dorsal fin.

                              A foreshock of coiled cataclysm.

Twenty oarfish washed up on the shores of Japan before
the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011.

Almost twenty thousand people died.

The oarfish is a specter thousands of feet below
sea level, beneath a weight of water we cannot traverse—
but it comes for us.

                                                           Can you feel it pulsing,
                                                           a flat silver ribbon undulating in the waves?
                                                           Does it rattle up your spine like a glimmering knife?

                      It is thought to be the source of sea monster legends
                      & accounts of ancient beasts such as leviathan.

               It appears so infrequently. We track each sighting:
               lying dead on a beach, or rarely,

               swimming vertically in the ocean.

                                                           Last fall, three washed up on California beaches.

               This year, one was spotted in shallow Baja peninsula waters.

                      We are fascinated by its blood-red fin, gaping mouth,
                      close acquaintance with death. We want to feel the shudder

of the sign — just not the thing signified.