THE INVADER

THE INVADER

THE INVADER

A walrus on dry land, you were
bulky and clumsy and implausibly
hairy, likely to bump into furniture,
send small, gilded things flying.
The kitchen shrank at the sight of 
you, penning your shopping list on
a shred of paper, a lime leaf 
trembling as it bares its veins 
to the early summer sun. 


Your lettering was such as the elves 
might have made, when leaving notes 
for the shoemaker. Your salade de boeuf 
à la parisienne was a millefeuille of beef
slivered into veils – Scheherezade 
must have worn them to mask her 
face and body as she spun her tales, 
keeping death on the other side of night. 


Bright orange wings – Vanessa Atalanta, 
scintilla astray in the Mojave desert – 
were once tomatoes. Bread you shaved 
to be thin as the collar-bone of a hare, 
worn thin by the lapping of water, 
or lace, woven in a beguinage, from 
threads almost invisible. 


Now I see you. Not a walrus, but
an oyster, puzzled to find yourself 
growing flesh round a grain of sand, 
burrowing into holes in the sea to let 
waves roll, and roll over you, score 
the music of the world’s waters 
on the opaline droplet stowed 
in your mantle.