Why the Marine Biologist Was Not a Painter

Because she had no eye for the little house of light diffused inside an orange peel.

Because her relentless quest was not West, but the nearest low-tide land.

Because Pittsburgh, a glue factory, fricative rivers of carp.

Because she wrote poems first (quiet, clotted petal-fall).

Because most surfaces, really any skin, would do.

Also elegy, elegies.

And subjects: armistice, woods, the horses’ inorganic arc to glue.

How she twisted under the soundthumb of “rind” and “Dardanelles.”

A porous boundary for the war body is what she wanted.

To pour saltwater over her feet, and, oh, God—industry, love, the fact of ocean.