Going through the notes I took during student presentations, I realized I have the rough beginnings of a poem on the weird and wonderful variety of sharks in the ocean.

So often I find these words together:

vulnerable, beautiful, strange.

Sometimes ugly is lucky.

The translucent goblin hates the sun.

Too deep for fishermen,

his nose is a flattened sword

to study currents.

When pulled into the upper world,

the Shortfin mako rebels

&  aborts her eggs

Other things we know:

Nurses travel long distances for love.

Porbeagles play seaweed games.

Megalodon’s jaws were a tunnel, a gateway

crushing whale skulls like grapes.

The angel (also called the sand devil)

lies motionless on the ocean floor

waiting for a hapless mollusk,

and captured in the swirling, indiscriminate sweep

of the fisherman’s trawl.

Who has seen the flickering southern lantern?

Been ambushed by a shaggy-bearded woebegong?

The poisonous flesh

of the slow, drowsy Greenland shark

will make you drunk.

Its teeth are dense, yellowed icicles.

It sneaks up on sleeping seals,

while the twirling, breaching

spinner shark can only be called

an ecstatic hunter.