for Seanan & Mira

When they carved the desk, a necessary place
to keep paper from molding and aging,
they cried as they stripped curves

from the world. Flat surfaces repelled
their sodden flesh like oil vomiting out
water. A necessary compromise with

land and light. To touch it was pain,
so one with clever claws whittled
whalebone with webbed fingers, forming

the creatures of the depths, all soft swirls
and terrible teeth, simple pulls for
small drawers, taxonomy complexifying

as they went, until they made the tripartite Lord
for the centerpiece. A sealskin blotter,
squid inks, scrimshaw pens, no chair needed.

Built up from there, a house to keep the
young in, for a time, to keep them always
in sight and sound of their mother sea.

The desk remained, doing its duty to keep
the blessed damp from the fragile paper
that said they owned this place entire,

according to the law that thought it ruled
the tide. When it was moved, something was lost
with the gain, but there were new discoveries,

a scion to bring the cousins, new tech that died
in water. If it meant the papers were
too far from the sea for comfort, nothing lasts

against the ocean. Better they be full
of new kin before the time when dead trees
would cease their pretender rule. The knobs

absorb the light, twist cunningly around
the eye, delight the relations who come,
curious, first to visit, then to stay. Not yet

the new age, not the promised time when
the earth will again fear the Lord and the tide.
The desk has time enough to carry out

the last of its purpose, to hold back the last greedy
dirt until it succumbs, with all, to sand
and the cubic weight of water's embrace.

© 2025 Elizabeth R McClellan