Seen on a Young Woman’s Chest
On her blue tee,
the whale of cosmic love floats,
but, beached,
would die of crushed lungs
under its own unsupported weight.
All gods ask too much of us;
it’s why we swim ashore
to slowly suffocate
by what we carried without thought
in the sea.
But don’t bother towing us back—
once you’ve left the ocean,
you no longer know how
to stay afloat without support.
It’s not love that crushes us,
but our failure to adapt
to its absence.
David Thornbrugh is a Ring of Fire poet based in Seattle, Washington. In his poetry, he strives to make sense of existence, and to lessen some of the gloom he feels as the natural world fades further and further into the past and the future looks less and less viable. He finds life without humor not worth the effort, and the idea of being a poet in America pretty funny.