Eleventh Severed Foot Washes Up on Local Beaches

"There are likely hundreds of dead human bodies in the waters of the Northwest at any given time."

 
Unexplained too long, phenomena and portends
become tedious.  No one wonders over the wind
 
lolling them past the buoys, little rivulets of muscle
in that needier stream.  Currents fuss and meander
shoelaces into kelp blisters, or braid them
with dull jellyfish tendrils and who says
 
the harbor shudders?   Don’t believe what they say—
biologists and astrologers— about the rubber tide. 
 
“If they were going, why have they come back?” 
The moon is sufficient explanation.  Secret silver
amongst a school of runners, salmon rove
back to spawn.   Another fleet narrows
 
an aisle of gulls, while a boat gathers a trawl
of crabs pinched to the feather gore blooming
 
like an anemone from a high-top (less than
five inches, and you throw them back). 
“Has anyone contacted kin or rightful owners?” 
Our world is too lonely not to miss
 
some things.  Legs bear down stiff against
ferry railings, approaching creosote pylons
 
where darker sneakers go unfound,
clack on pebble on barnacle on bone,
tapped out.   In more civilized waters, it’s said
that heads drift downstream and the branches low
 
to their song, stones lull themselves into the shapes
of temples.  Such sweet caution sung.