Decades ago I read a newspaper clip about a night fisherman in Fiji who died after a small swordfish jumped at the light he was carrying and stabbed him through the eye into his brain. I could not stop thinking about how, from the morning that both the fisherman and the swordfish were born, they would be fated to travel inexorably towards each other, meeting face to face in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. The fish was his Death, come for him, always meant to come just for him.
***
all of your life has moved to place you here
the prism is compressing to a beam
a hungry fish hunts in the liquid night
two lives will merge, like silk without a seam
your name is here, a shimmer in the deep
a sliver that was called by you at birth
there was an arc that ever knew the time
a silver tail is beating in the earth
your friends are on the shore, your light leans out
the dark is like a dome and like a bed
infinity is speeding to this place
infinity has claims upon your head
and when the moment leaps—the stars go out
who'd ever guess a destiny so swift?
a thing of scales strains bright into the air
its only flight became its final gift
