The Lazarus Fish

Coelacanths ( /ˈsiːləkænθ/, adaptation of Modern Latin Cœlacanthus "hollow spine", from Greek κοῖλ-οςkoilos "hollow" + ἄκανθ-α akantha "spine", referring to the hollow caudal fin rays of the first fossil specimen described and named by Louis Agassiz in 1839 ^[1]) are members of an order of fish that includes the oldest known living lineage of Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish and tetrapods).


I ask him about love

the real kind

the meant-for-each-other kind

and though he doesn’t think it’s

any more likely than a unicorn

he pretends to consider the question.  He says

he’s heard of it but never

seen the thing itself.

I sense the rationality

behind his words, and am crushed.

I think of all the lovers I have known

I search for one pair among them

who live in the kingdom I imagine:

peopled with dragons and princes

queens and the courtly knights who would win them

and suddenly the wakeup call is too much.

Like a child who abruptly knows the kindly man

with the laugh-lines and white beard

and an overabundance of gifts

is not and never was real

I am awake

and grieving for the dreams.

But who among us knows love?

If it exists at all it’s so rare it is barely a rumor:

someone said their grandparents had it

somebody else witnessed it once, in passing

at a cafe in Paris.

Fairy tales and stories, children’s games

something you grow out of

something nature fools you into

for a few blind years, then leaves you stranded.

The real thing is an animal

that may have gone extinct millions of years ago

like coelacanth, that strange wild-eyed fish

long relegated to the fossil record. 

Some crazy biologist is out there hunting it

believing

against all the evidence that this thing is still around;

like that child who won’t let go of Santa

like that staunch believer in Sasquatch.

There is a gleam in the biologist’s eye

an imbalanced, uneasy gleam.

Why doesn’t she just settle (the sane wonder)

for an ordinary fish? So many cod and salmon,

thousands of tuna; why the coelacanth?--this creature

that if it ever existed, will never be seen again.

Meanwhile, off the coast of South Africa

a pair of fishermen in a small wooden trawler

are hauling up their catch:

there among the rays and sharks, cod and tuna

the Lazarus fish, gone these 65 million years

a living fossil, rare beyond rare.

Coelacanth gapes impossibly up at them

five feet long and real as the blinding sun

its hollow spine and lobed fins writhing.

It looks nothing at all like a fairy princess

nothing at all like a unicorn, a courtly knight

or Santa Claus. 

But that crazy biologist doesn’t care--no:

this is the fish for her

this is the thing she’s after.

I wait a few hours and then I ask him again,

my rational lover: have you ever seen it?

The real thing, the thing itself?

He looks at me this time

the way you might look at a creature

fresh from the kingdom of impossibility

looks, closes

his eyes, says

maybe.

©KB 10/3/12

http://www.dinofish.com/