Why do I cry?
I saw a jewel.
No heart, no bones
and nerveless in
the pink postcoital light—

I am nowhere near done,
so you say
imagine an animal—
and I am taken
to the white core of
the Cambrian explosion,
bend in the heat and
emerge with an apple—

and we have bobbed in the tropics,
bobbed in the icy polar seas
and mindlessly scoured the floor—

stingers drawn
head and tail aglow with
Jamaica Farewell,
you catch a swell.

– Josh Lipson