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Two Poems by Erica Funkhouser

The Blue in Beets

The blue in beets
comes and goes
sometimes a shadow
of the weeds
where beets grew
or of their towering leaves
other times a suggestion
of what the beets
might have been:
blue birds
blue stones
blue fish
blue whales
blue water.
if blue isn't here
it's there
if it's not there
it's coming
if you have just seen it
it will back
if you have never seen it
you will.

Fishing for Flounder

Whether or not flounder prowl
the floor of Blue Hill Bay
we do not know for sure,
by we lower our knobs of salted pork
on fishhooks as if to ask.

Is it these rocks over which their flat white stomachs,
like the hands of the blind,
brush in search of sustenance,
trusting the topography
to take them
where delicious crab crawl?

Is it here their ocean-purple eyes
gaze at the world up as down,
studying its inversions in depth?

We think the flounder must possess
some horizontal wisdom--
the stability of those who never leap,
who stick to the bottom
of life's deep pools.
A bit dull, perhaps,
with their detailed knowledge
of the few bleak centimeters
beneath their gills,
but extraordinarily informed
about the dark motions
whose polished surface
is all we see.