After the sporty dolphin show
you might wander down the dimmed aqua stairs
into a darkness they have cut windows
through, to see beyond the foggy glass
all fishes swimming. It’s not a glass bowl,
but like the earth itself cut through,
so that you are a traveler
rising from the interior to this first glimpse
at the teeming world. They circle slowly: sharks,
jewfish, yellow fin; a stately manta pumps
its black wings, soars toward
the chopped surface, sinks into a turn, and disappears.
It is some kind of lion with the lamb business,
all these varieties, cold killers and dumb
swimmers, schoolers, the lonely blue-throated
pilot fish, speckled distraught octopi
jammed under rocks. You have come out of sunlight