Ash Davida Jane
someone forgot about the eels
again we can’t keep letting this happen
those primordial water worms slippery
little dicks I’ve been told
they’re more afraid of us than we are
of them but I don’t think that’s true
I don’t think they think of us at all
as they dart behind a rock in the
coldest water we’ve ever swum in
where the river appears from
under the mountain the kind of deep blue
so natural it seems unnatural now
a colour we have foregone except in films
for years we’ll talk about it the time
we swam in the resurgence
we’ll agree we were rebirthed
that what matters most is how
you climb out again resist the pull
of the water that clings to bare skin in beads
even after you’re gone
brace legs numb with unfeeling
against the unforgiving rock
slick with algae and all at once
exist as a mass the shift from water
to land as if for the very first time
become a new kind of animal
blood warming in real time
fur on the backs of your arms
standing to attention nipples taut
in your swimsuit biology performing
its tricks like they’re nothing
like it isn’t a miracle we manage
to survive in this place
or any place
and yet I want to swim
down to the depths into the cavern
from where the water flows
follow it beneath the rock until
all light has gone
return to my future state
exist only in relation to the
movement of life around me
having shed any kind of disparate self
wait it out for a few millennia
before daring to reemerge
remembered only by the eels if at all
Ash Davida Jane is a poet from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Her second book, How to Live With Mammals (Te Herenga Waka University Press) won second place in the 2021 Laurel Prize. She is an editor and publisher at We Are Babies Press.