Lisa Williams reads

Jellyfish

Movement means closure,
a thrust from where you are,
that gelid other plane,

your bell-like head
with wordless aperture
emptying, emptying,

the pleats of your innards,
a shallow accordion.
Your tendrils trail neon

lit cities of cells
—you, pellucid ferry,
invisibly carried

spun dome like the ghost
of some merry-go-round.
And we who don’t float

with such unconscious ease
think it terror to rise
from our notions of land,

rock, and ownership, can’t
ride a bottomless plain,
colored thrust in our sails,

in the lax, placid matter
that holds, not from falls
(for you too fill your head

so your gossamer motors
move onward) but holds
your shape firm. Even you,

if you never once moved,
if you didn’t take in
the first place where you are,

fold around that cold present
then push out, with liquid
momentum (like knowledge)

from flushed, chambered cells,
would ascend nowhere new.
In the planktonic dark,

a touch is the world,
the devouring of touch
motion’s guidance. Your emptied

bell head tolls the thrust,
the sole luminous effort—clear
life thinking’s lost!